Noise complaints lead to bomb threat at Norwegian crypto mining farm

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A crypto mining farm in Norway has been subjected to a bomb threat, supposedly because of the noise made from its mining operations.

According to the Vakdalposten newspaper, crypto mining company Kryptovault received the threat last Saturday, which read: “This is sabotage. If you are expanding crypto mining and filling the country with noise, then you will be sabotaging the peace. I am threatening to send you some explosives.”

Kryptovault Managing Director Gjermund Hagesaeter told the Ringerikes Blad newspaper, “The threat has been reported to the police and these are also taking the whole issue very seriously indeed. We have also asked the police to assess whether any further action needs to be taken. The facility at Follum is located in a fenced area, so it would be difficult for any intruder to gain access but the one at Dale is far more accessible so we have warned everyone to be on their toes.”

Hagesaester admitted having had run-ins before with residents in the two cities. The bomb threat seems to have been spurred by a newspaper feature about Kryptovault.

According to the Kryptovault website, the Follum, Honefoss facility has 4,200 square meters of hosting space, and is operational at 40 megawatts. The facility in Dale, Hordaland, on the other hand, is operational at 20 megawatts with 120-megawatt capacity and has 20,000 square meters of hosting space. Both are powered by hydro- and wind-powered turbines.

Last year, Kryptovault Chairman Rein-Owe Flister and Chief Operations Officer Kjetil Hove Pettersen invested about $1.2 million in Chinese-made hardware for mining, where 70%-80% of these are rented out to customers. Among cryptocurrencies mined through the facility are BTC, ETH, LTC and DASH.

Relatively low hydroelectricity costs and cool weather in Scandinavia are partly responsible for miners’ interest in setting up shop in the area. Last March, American mining firm Bitfury entered into an agreement with the Norwegian government to build a $35-million data center that will facilitate business transactions through the use of blockchain.

Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.