HEMATITE 鈥 Off a quiet gravel road in Jefferson County sits a new mining facility that will use massive amounts of electricity to operate. It awaits one final step of governmental approval before it can begin working to earn digital cryptocurrency.
鈥淚t鈥檚 ready to have the key turned on. It鈥檚 just sitting there,鈥 said Mitch Bair, the director of county services and code enforcement.
But some Jefferson County residents say the plan has remained under the radar and the public is only finding out now that it is on the brink of operation. They are concerned about adding an energy-intensive facility to the local power grid, potential noise levels and the impact on property values. And they harbor distrust about the industry because, for example, some authorities view cryptocurrencies as a top .
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鈥淭hey鈥檙e sketchy at best and use tremendous amounts of power,鈥 said Dave Hill, a Crystal City resident who has friends who live near the project. 鈥淭hose things, they suck up a lot of juice.鈥
鈥淚t just makes me mad, too, that they鈥檝e been so secretive about this,鈥 Hill said, adding that he was only made aware of the project from a recent article in the Jefferson County Leader newspaper. 鈥淣o one knew about it until it鈥檚 almost ready to go.鈥
The debate echoes recent controversy about energy-intensive projects elsewhere in the region. In St. Charles, a push by an unnamed tech giant to build a huge data center there was scrapped last month amid strong public opposition. And the 最新杏吧原创 planning commission last week encouraged the Board of Aldermen to put a moratorium on developing more data centers in the city.
Bair said the project would be the first crypto mine in Jefferson County.
鈥淚 think the cons outweigh the pros,鈥 said Gary Kappler, a Festus resident who has a farm near the site in Hematite and is a deacon at a local church.
Paperwork with Jefferson County officials lists Global Connect Communications, a corporation formed in Florida, as the applicant behind the crypto mining operation. But the Hematite Fire Protection District, which had to examine the facility, reports that its interactions have been with NYDIG, a bitcoin-focused affiliate of a New York-based financial firm that plans to take full ownership of the Jefferson County operation in the near future.
In January 2023, Jefferson County approved a request from Global Connect Communications to rezone the site. An application to develop the site was submitted in March 2024.
The project sits near Highway P, next to a Missouri National Guard armory, large power lines and an Ameren substation 鈥 hinting at bitcoin鈥檚 significant energy requirements.
The National Guard has given a preliminary OK to the project but still must grant the project an easement as the final piece of approval, through state officials. Neither company involved with the project responded to a request for an interview, nor did the state-level public affairs office for the National Guard.
The facility will have a negligible impact on local employment, with one security guard and expected infrequent visits from a technician, said Bair.
Bitcoin mining
Bitcoin only exists as a digital cryptocurrency and has no physical backing, like coins or bills. Its perceived value hinges largely on its designed scarcity, with a finite number of bitcoins gradually issued over time. No single authority controls the decentralized system.
All bitcoin transactions are tracked in an electronic public ledger called a blockchain.
To get 鈥 or 鈥渕ine鈥 鈥 new bitcoins, computers must grind through staggering numbers of calculations, or hashes, in a process that 鈥渞esembles a numeric guessing game鈥 and aims to produce a winning number, said a 2024 paper from Alex de Vries, who has published academic research on bitcoin and founded Digiconomist, a website that examines consequences of digital trends.
That computing takes up tremendous amounts of electricity 鈥 collectively exceeding more than most countries in the world. If bitcoin鈥檚 total electricity consumption were compared alongside that of entire nations, it would rank 23rd in the world in power usage, just after Thailand and ahead of South Africa, according to the .
And domestically, a 2024 estimate said 鈥渃ryptocurrency mining probably represents from 0.6% to 2.3% of U.S. electricity consumption,鈥 according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
That scale of power demand forms the basis of some of the concerns voiced in Jefferson County about energy load and costs. For example, University of California, Berkeley, researchers found in 2021 that the activity .
While some studies have also shown significant water usage by bitcoin mining facilities for cooling 鈥 similar to data centers 鈥 officials said the Jefferson County site would use a different system.
And while bitcoin mining uses significant power to operate, all that computing generates heat that in some cases adjacent businesses, such as greenhouses or even small fish farms, can use, said Tim Ruyle, a Wentzville resident who mines bitcoin in Iowa and also manages fleets of crypto mining equipment in Missouri for clients through his company called HashratePros.
Ruyle said mining operations can provide power utilities a large and reliable customer. Ameren spokesman Brad Brown said the utility would not comment on the Jefferson County facility.
Though the bitcoin facility in Jefferson County is tucked out of plain sight, blueprints show more than 50 pads with computing equipment at the site, stored in units resembling small shipping containers.
And while much of the nearby vicinity is residential and not zoned for such industrial use, Bair, the county official, expects similar projects ranging from crypto mining to energy storage or data centers could become more common suitors in the future 鈥 in some ways the 鈥渘ew industrial鈥 archetype that鈥檚 attracted to electric transmission access in the area, instead of more traditional manufacturing.
鈥淲e will see a lot more of this interest moving forward,鈥 he said 鈥 an outlook shared by some political and utility leaders across the state, despite uncertainty about what could ultimately materialize.
That forecast is also on the mind of opponents like Kappler.
鈥淵ou just don鈥檛 know what they鈥檙e going to do in the future. It鈥檚 all murky,鈥 he said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e like a steamboat going through a fog with a lot of snags.鈥
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