Appalachia residents claim they are being driven out of their

Residents in a North Carolina Appalachian town say they’re being forced to leave their homes due to a noisy cryptocurrency mine that has drawn petitions and protests.  

The facility in Murphy, one of two in Cherokee County, has consistently made a sound that resident Mike Lugiewicz describes as ‘a small jet that never leaves.’ In September, one mine was described as ‘more costly than beef production.’

Sound meters run by Lugiewicz out of his yard showed the ceaseless noise of the stacks of computer servers and cooling fans scoring from 55 to 85 decibels. 

‘There’s a racetrack three miles out right here,’ Lugiewicz said. ‘You can hear the cars running. It’s cool.’ 

‘But at least they stop,’ neighbor Judy Stines added to CNN. ‘And you can go to bed.’ 

Residents in a North Carolina Appalachian town say they’re being forced to leave their homes due to a noisy cryptocurrency mine that has drawn petitions and protests

Bans on crypto by places like China have led those looking to harvest searching for locations along Appalachia, as power is relatively affordable and regulation is usually non-existent in those areas. 

A company called PrimeBlock has bought a dozen mines across North Carolina, as well as in Tennessee and Kentucky. 

The company – based out of San Francisco – has garnered about $300million in equity financing and is likely to go public soon.  

Despite a largely Republican and Libertarian base, the noise has forced residents to demand their local government do something about it, with the Board of Commissioners recently asking state and federal officials to regulate crypto mining. 

‘I personally think that if we can get a bill into the system, other (North Carolina) counties will join,’ Chairman Cal Stiles said.

Chandler Song, PrimeBlock Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer, said that such regulation would be ‘unconstitutional, to say the least’ and said of the locales: ‘Oh boy, they wanted us so bad a year ago.’

There were plans for representatives from PrimeBlock to speak at a Cherokee County Board meeting, but County Commission Chair Dan Eichenbaum said that they decided not to come because someone shot at one of the service lines. 

Resident Mike Lugiewicz (pictured left) describes the noise as like ‘a small jet that never leaves’

Bans on crypto by places like China have led those looking to harvest searching for locations along Appalachia, as power is relatively affordable and regulation is usually non-existent in those areas

Song has since said that he hasn’t heard any complaints from the county but promised PrimeBlock would build noise insulation walls and install water-based cooling systems that made a sound, the Washington Post reported. 

They did, but only on two sides of the mine before construction stopped, only making residents angrier. 

Both Song and co-founder Ryan Fang were featured in a 2017 Forbes list of young entrepreneurs who were able to raise over $10million in funding for projects.