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Bitcoin-Mining Power Plant Secretly Launched in Alberta, Tapping Dormant Gas Well from the power-plays dept. "When residents of an affluent estate community in Alberta started hearing noise from a nearby power plant, they didn't expect their complaints of sleepless nights would lead to a months-long investigation that would find a bitcoin mining operation had set up shop without approval," reports the CBC: Now, Link Global, the company behind the site, is being ordered by the province's utility commission to shut down two plants until it can prove it's allowed to operate — a move the company says will cost jobs and cause the oil and gas infrastructure in which it operates to sit dormant.... Vancouver-based Link Global had set up four 1.25 MW gas generators at the site, pulling power from a dormant natural gas well owned by Calgary-based company MAGA Energy. The natural gas powers thousands of computer servers that run programs to "mine" digital currency.

Analysis: the staggering cost of cryptomining isn't just an expensive graphics card In addition to the   outrageous prices   being charged online for graphics cards like the   RTX 3080   and   RTX 3090   – even among legitimate retailers – there is a much greater cost to the cryptomining craze of the past few years.  Despite what cryptocurrency advocates claim, actual scientists who study the effects of cryptomining on the environment are pretty much in agreement that it's an ecological disaster.  Cryptomining, globally, requires 110,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, while all of the solar panels in the United States   produced only 90,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours   in 2020. You can say that this energy diversion is well spent if you believe cryptocurrencies have utility beyond holding critical national infrastructure hostage for ransom, buying drugs online, or money laundering, but it   is   energy diversion.  It might not be as explicit as in this case in Mal