That has a knock-on effect on local energy prices, which is also provoking a backlash in some areas.
In 2017, Bitcoin miners flooded into Plattsburgh, New York – a city of about 20,000 people a couple of hours to the north of Dresden – because of cheap hydroelectricity rates. “We were getting Bitcoin applications from operators all around the world,” says the city’s mayor at the time, Colin Read.
Yet they used so much power that electricity rates shot up. Within a year, some residents were paying up to 40% more during winter months, Read says.
The following year, he and other local lawmakers passed rules against buildings blasting out hot air.
“Fortunately we put a stop to it,” he says, noting that all but one Bitcoin mining operation left the city.
Opposition in Maga heartlands
Resistance to Bitcoin mines extends to places with the biggest Trump support.
Cyndie Roberson was retired and unaware of the crypto industry until a Bitcoin mining operation moved to her small town in North Carolina in 2021. The locals banded together and managed to ban new Bitcoin developments in their area – but the existing one was allowed to stay and the bitterness of the fight made her decide to move south, to Gilmer County in Georgia.
There, Ms Roberson has campaigned against crypto mining in a region that is solidly pro-Republican. In the county where she lives, she says that around 1,000 people came to a public meeting to oppose a mine, which then wasn’t allowed to operate.
Just north of Gilmer, the Fannin County Commission has enacted a ban on crypto mining, while a Georgian commission representing 18 primarily rural counties has published advice on how to restrict the development of Bitcoin mines.
“When you’re in my backyard, when you’re in my town, trying to wreck our property and our peace, people will tell you, it’s a hard ‘no’,” says Ms Roberson.
Although 80% of local people backed Trump last November, that support doesn’t appear to stop people opposing one of his key crypto goals.
‘You can build your own power plant’
The Trump administration is not planning to do away with all regulations around crypto mining – but it is ready to actively help companies open power plants next to the mines.
In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine in April, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said: “We’re going to make it so that if you want to mine Bitcoin, and you find the right place to do it, you can build your own power plant next to it,” going on to argue that such projects would stop “these stories about ‘You’re taking too much power and now the cost of operating my refrigerator is higher’.”
“The next generation of miners in America will be able to control their destiny, control the cost of power, and I think that is going to turbocharge Bitcoin mining in America,” Lutnick told the magazine.
According to Zack Shapiro, head of policy at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a US think tank that researches emerging monetary networks, that process has already begun. “There are states that are passing laws specifically prohibiting municipalities from banning Bitcoin mines,” he says. “It’s a mechanism by which mining companies can fight back.”
And the nature of Bitcoin mining means that, if it meets resistance, it can quickly move on to somewhere more favourable.
When Colin Read tackled the mines in Plattsburgh, he saw how easily they could change location.
“This industry is really footloose,” he said. “When we told these companies they couldn’t have more power without going through hoops, they packed up and went to a community where they didn’t have such strict requirements.”
Offshore mines of the future?
Local opposition is not Trump’s only challenge. Could the sea, for example, be a better location for Bitcoin mining?
Mr Shapiro believes that, with miners looking for the lowest cost, they could turn to leftover renewable energy that can’t be used by other applications. “Wind power in the ocean can’t be used to power a city, but you can set up an offshore platform that captures offshore wind and tidal energy, and use that to mine Bitcoin – because there’s not another buyer to use that energy, it’s probably ultimately where Bitcoin mining operations move.”
It could also be that in the cryptocurrency race, Bitcoin might not be the best bet. Read – who is an energy economist – is sceptical about the staying power of energy-intensive Bitcoin because he believes other more efficient alternatives are going to emerge.
With the White House egging on the industry, fights over Bitcoin mining will inevitably play out in smaller forums, in state and local governments and tiny places like Dresden.
But one constant in the short history of Bitcoin has been volatility. It might be boom times now – yet a downturn in the price, shifts in energy sources and changing crypto needs could fundamentally reshape the Bitcoin mining landscape, no matter how much Trump wants to keep it in the US.