In the Kentucky Mountains, a Bitcoin Mining Dream Becomes the Stuff of Nightmares

On a dead-end road that climbs out of the tiny city of Jenkins, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Eastern Kentucky, there stands a large warehouse with a mint green roof. It shares the road with a few other businesses, but is otherwise surrounded by an expanse of open fields and tree-lined slopes. Inside, the warehouse is stacked high with racks on racks of computers—thousands of them. But none have ever been switched on.

The warehouse is owned by Mohawk Energy, a company cofounded by Kentucky state senator Brandon Smith in 2005, originally to resculpt landscapes disfigured by coal mining. After lying dormant for a period, Mohawk was

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