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.

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.