Norwegian town takes aim at Bitcoin miners

Authorities and residents of the Norwegian town of Sortland have begun a fight against a local mining company over the noise it produces. Cointelegraph reports.

Residents’ complaints arose despite the firm KryptoVault creating jobs, and the business using the heat generated by its equipment to dry timber and seaweed, the publication notes.

The head of the company, Kjetil Hov Pettersen, accused the media of stirring up the protest.

“Usually negative voices attract the most attention from the media, but that does not reflect all local opinions,” he said.

According to Pettersen, grid operators are happy to cooperate with miners as they help balance demand. However, “in the current climate there is a political and social price to pay for frank statements about this,” he added.

“The narratives that we are suppressing other industrial enterprises because we consume (skeptics say: we waste) so much energy are not true. Sometimes we are accused of driving up energy prices. That is not true either,” said Pettersen.

According to him, the mining business is more likely to contribute to lower grid charges for electricity consumers and higher revenues for municipalities.

Pettersen says the Bitcoin industry has “a lot of work to do to dispel myths and misperceptions” around the sector.

In 2021, the Norwegian government expressed willingness to support the Swedish regulators’ initiative to ban at EU level cryptocurrency mining on the Proof-of-Work algorithm.

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