In the Kentucky Mountains, a Bitcoin Mining Dream Turned Into a Nightmare
When bitcoin was on a hot streak, owners of small industrial facilities in Kentucky struck up crypto mining partnerships with Chinese companies. Then things fell apart.
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 reincarnated in 2022 when Smith struck a deal with HBTPower, a company then owned by Chinese crypto exchange Huobi, which wanted to use the warehouse for a bitcoin mining operation.