The city of Sherbrooke, Quebec, east of Montreal, got a big revenue lift when it welcomed Bitfarms, a company that makes cryptocurrencies. The 500 people who neighbor the company’s computer center got something else: an inescapable drone that is driving many of them crazy. “It’s comparable to torture,” said a city councilor.
Bitfarms makes money by using high powered computers to generate the digital currency bitcoins, explains The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 13-14, 2021). Miners compete to add transactions to bitcoin’s ledger by finding numbers that satisfy a formula; the first to do so are rewarded with new coins. There’s no shortcut, so miners with fast computers—and lots of them— to sift though the possibilities have an edge.
The powerful computers must be cooled by an array of fans. Their whirring noise has left residents who live near cryptocurrency operations in Quebec, Georgia, Montana and other places agitated and frazzled. Some compare it to a giant dentist’s drill, others to a fleet of helicopters in the backyard. “I wear earplugs inside my own house,” said one resident after bitcoin company Blockstream opened in her town of Adel, Ga. She can no longer sit on her porch. She says the noise sounds like 1,000 hair dryers. She has measured the sound levels at 70 decibels from her front porch, as loud as a vacuum cleaner. Indoors, sound levels measured more than 53 decibels, as loud as a dishwasher. The noise has persisted despite the layers of insulation that she put up at a cost of $7,000.
The mining companies say they are putting in quieter equipment and adding sound barriers around the plants. Under a deal with Adel, Blockstream must keep the sound levels 500 feet from the facility’s property line at 60 decibels or below. Blockstream plans to build a 15- foot-high berm to dampen the sound.
As the price and popularity of cryptocurrencies increases, more mines are popping up. Officials in Montana passed new zoning rules that would restrict how much noise and vibration businesses can create. The city of Plattsburgh, N.Y., passed a noise ordinance to deal with bitcoin mines. But the issue isn’t just the level of sound. It is also the frequency, measured by its ability to irritate. The mines resemble the whine of an airplane engine revving up on the tarmac.
Classroom discussion questions:
- We deal with the issue of work environments’ sound levels in Figure 10.4(b) in your text. Where does Blockstream fall on the decibel levels?
- What are the OM issues facing crypto mining farms?
