Her skepticism is rooted in experience: in October 2000, a huge shelling of the coal suspension from the mine was poisoned by the Coldwater fork stream, which runs behind her house. People in Inez could not drink tap water for many months.
“It was of us who live down the river that did not hear about it for some time, but the school system had to close for about a week until they received an alternative source of water,” he says.
To this day, many in Inez still did not trust the tap water.
So when McCoy hears the buzz of artificial intelligence, he hears something different: another promise that is associated with costs. “We allowed these people to be called work creators,” she said. “And I don’t care if it is AI, Crypto or anything else, we bow to them and let us tell us what they intend to do our community because they are work creators. They are not work creators, they are producers of profits.
And the profit leaves a trace.
AI data centers require stunning amount of energy“Chatgpt search consumes up to 10 times more energy than ordinary Google One” and they work hot. To keep cooling, these objects consume billions of gallons of water each year. Most of them evaporate, but the inhabitants are cautious because they had problems with the objects and their trip in the past, so they are worried that these new objects can affect fish and disturb the earth. The same things that Kentucky residents hope to keep.
Despite this, some locals see potential and even progress.
“A.” Siri, chatgpt, robotics “-all that you can imagine must have artificial intelligence,” he said. “Ubitcoin is a pony with one trick. You create him. The only person who receives payment is the owner of the machine.”
Hamilton claims that there is a path forward in which data centers bring investors, engineers, and maybe even companies willing to stay. Hamilton says that all AI people in the world would evaporate to Kentucky. And although he admits to losing a fortune in cryptographic ventures in the past, he claims that this is different.
When Bitcoin came for the first time, the legislators offered generous tax relief to lure miners. Companies investing over $ 1 million were exempt from paying taxes on sales from equipment and electricity. And then, in March 2025, the governor of Kentucky Andy Beshear raised it all and went a step further, signing the law for “rights”.
Legislation, filled as defense of personal financial freedom, aims to stop using digital assets in Kentucky. The earlier project went further, aimed at blocking local governments in the application of spatial development provisions to limit cryptocurrency extraction operations – a provision that has deemed the resistance of environmental groups. This language has been finally softened, but it is intention to: signal that in Kentucky digital extraction can maintain.
That is why we found ourselves in this object in Campton, staring at this semicircle of metal buildings located on the trees. The mines last all night or even Sundays. And the question that some people ask now, and Bitcoin was about $ 100,000 and Great miners talk about revolutions to AIIt consists in whether the extraction of bitcoins gets a second wind in Kentucky.
Mining Bitcoin Mohawk can even return. Anna Whites said that the parties should go to arbitration on May 12. “I hope,” she told us. “I hope they are sitting and saying:” Washing a nice plant you have there. Let’s just move forward and turn it on.