The town that rebelled against the crypto farm that kept it awake for six months | International

The first time Irene Brizuela heard the buzzing that was to become unending, she thought it was a beehive. To her, it was a noise, but to her five-year-old nonverbal son on the autism spectrum, it was the beginning of a crisis. “He began to cry and shake. We had to close the door to his room so that he wouldn’t hear it,” she says, remembering that late night in June 2024. It was to become their daily routine for the next six months.

Brizuela, a 32-year-old nurse, lives with her son and husband 650 feet away from a bitcoin farm in Santa Lucía de Villarrica, the capital of the department of Guairá, located three hours from Asunción, Paraguay. The farm is property of the Canadian firm Bitfarms, which trades on the U.S. and Canadian stock markets.

Brizuela and her family’s neighbors couldn’t rest either. José Luis Figueredo began to take sleeping pills. For the accountant, who lives a half mile from the farm, it was like listening to a truck lugging a semi-trailer around his home’s interior, 24 hours a day. “There comes a moment in which your mental health is impacted. I thought, ‘I’m going to throw a bomb and bring down the electrical grid.’ It was really affecting me. I was afraid of having to depend on medication to be able to rest,” he says.

The farm was built atop one of the hillsides of the small valley that forms the Cañada San Juan in Santa Lucía. It has metal walls, black gates and a security guard who monitors access to the five-hectare property. Bitfarms’ 2024 report states that 16,200 processors operate inside, generating bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency. The processors are like supercomputers that continuously solve mathematical puzzles to produce cryptocurrencies, and require a large amount of electricity. In six months, the farm consumes the same amount of electricity as 47,500 families over the course of a year.

There’s also a system at the Bitfarms facility that prevents the machines from overheating. According to the company, 14,400 of them are refrigerated using fans and extractors, while 1,800 others are maintained with immersion cooling.

That noise that tormented the Santa Lucía neighborhood between June and November of 2024 came from the processors, plus the fans and hot-air extractors that regulate their temperature. The residents lived under these conditions until the city’s public prosecutor’s office filed charges against Bitfarms for harmful noise offenses.

An investigation by El Surti and EL PAÍS found irregularities in the administrative processes of the Municipality of Villarrica and its environmental department that permitted the Canadian company to operate in a residential area where houses were located less than 165 feet away. It also found that the neighbors had been left with symptoms ranging from irritability to post-traumatic stress.

The consequences of noise

The World Health Organization recommends limiting exposure to sounds that exceed 70 decibels. To be able to rest, background noise should be less than 40 decibels. The community of Santa Lucía was exposed 24 hours a day to volumes that rose above the WHO recommended limits, and even those of local Villarrica regulations, which sets the maximum volume allowed in urban areas at 70 decibels by day and 55 by night. Nonetheless, measurements taken by the city’s environmental department in July 2024 found the Bitfarms facility clocking in at 75 decibels at 11 a.m.

Psychologist and researcher Maureen Montanía says that prolonged exposure to noise like that emitted by the crypto farm leads people to live in constant stress, which can cause greater anxiety, depression and loss of sleep. When it comes to people on the autism spectrum, effects are more serious due to their greater sensitivity to sounds, which is known as hyperacusis, she explains. Montanía compares their experience to that of hearing a chainsaw all day long, even when they use earplugs. “It’s a tremendous level of torture,” she says.

Luz Aranda uses similar language to describe her experience during the nearly six-month period. The first time she heard the noise, she through it was a drill. She woke up suddenly at 2 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. “I began to cry,” she says. “And now I remember it and it affects me again. I feel so much impotence, so much anger. It makes me want to go break something.”

Aranda is a psychologist and director of the department of mental health at Villarrica’s regional hospital. She lives with her spouse, Juan Enriquez, in a house they built 10 years ago in the Santa Lucía de Villarrica neighborhood, approximately 2,300 feet from the source of the noise. For the couple, those sleepless months were a form of psychological domination and abuse.

The effects of noise on our health have been widely studied. A 2022 report found that exposure to noise raises the risk of anxiety by 55% and mental health problems in general by 119%. Another study from 2013 demonstrated that children exposed to road, rail and air traffic have lower capacity for reading, memory and scholastic performance.

Ear, nose and throat specialist Fernando José Cubilla Moro, who works on issues of occupational audiology and noise pollution, points out that exposure to continuous noise can cause damage to the inner ear and reduce hearing ability. It can also increase cortisol production due to stress and cause damage to the cardiovascular and immune systems.

The crypto paradise of cheap and renewable energy

The Bitfarms plant was not the only one approved by the Villarrica city government. A memo from November 2024 shows that the municipality gave permits to another eight crypto mines in residential and commercial zones.

Hydroelectricity company Itaipú, in which Brazil and Paraguay hold equal ownership, calls itself “world leader in clean and renewable energy generation.” Its facility located on the Paraná River has a 14,000-megawatt capacity that accounts for 9% of Brazil’s electricity consumption and 86% of Paraguay’s. The latter country’s little more than six million inhabitants don’t use up its share of energy, and Paraguay sends the excess to Brazil at below market price, and depends on imported fossil fuels for its transportation. Such practices have been at the center of political debate.

In addition, over the last decade, crypto mining has become a focus of interest. Historian Belén Cantero says the beginning of large-scale crypto mining in Paraguay took place in 2017. The epicenter of this first wave of foreign investor was Villarrica, where Bitfarms operates. There, light and energy company CLYFSA sells cheap electricity, thanks to a judicial ruling that allows it to buy energy from the National Administration of Electricity (ANDE) at a lower price.

With the rise of crypto mining, the energy needs of mega-farms, which can house thousands of processors, have increased. And since CLYFSA can’t cover the demand, firms are opting to buy power from ANDE. In 2024 alone, the sector contracted enough state energy to supply a city of 750,000 inhabitants, a little more than the entire population of the country’s capital Asunción, for more than $100 million. This figure does not include the eight crypto miners that buy from CLYFSA, nor the illegal farms that steal energy.

The Alto Paraná department, which shares borders with Brazil and Argentina, is the primary destination for large crypto mining companies due to the electrical capacity of the area thanks to the Itaipú dam and large ANDE substations. Firms like Muiden, Hive and Penguin have facilities in Alto Paraná. Before March, 46 crypto miners had contracts with the state-run company, according to information obtained by a public records request.

In June 2024, ANDE raised the electricity rates for crypto miners, who today pay between $44.34 and $59.76 plus taxes per megawatt hour. According to Juan José Benítez Rickmann, president of the Paraguayan Chamber of Cryptoasset Mining and director of Digital Assets, 35 companies ceased operations after the rate hike, the majority of them based on Paraguayan capital. Benítez says that he too looked into moving his business to another country like Bolivia, where electricity is cheaper, though more harmful to the environment because it comes from fossil fuel.

According to engineer Diego Monroy, who is in favor of crypto mining gas usage in Bolivia, the only option for crypto miners to move to the country and be sustainable “is to be supplied with cheap energy or to be allowed to use resources that are currently wasted, such as flare gas [excess natural gas].”

In contrast to Paraguay, a large part of the energy used by crypto mining in other countries is generated through the combustion of fossil fuels, which generate significant amounts of the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. A United Nations study found that bitcoin mining emitted 85.89 megatons of carbon dioxide between 2020 and 2021. Not to mention, that every bitcoin transaction uses on average 16,000 liters of water, “enough to fill a backyard pool”.

The most significant impact of crypto mining in Paraguay lies in its intensive energy consumption. Even if the industry’s electricity comes from hydroelectric plants, the sources of its production do suffer from climate shocks, like the drought that caused generation at Itaipú to fall by 20% in 2024. For researcher Guillermo Achucarro from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, crypto mining is pure extractivism, “whereby private companies extract natural resources for foreign benefit, usually from the Global North, without leaving any added value in one’s country.”

Bitfarms operates facilities in the United States, Canada, Argentina and Paraguay. According to its December 2024 financial report, last year the firm’s earnings topped $192.8 million. 13.5% of that amount comes from the farms it operates in Santa Lucía de Villarrica. Paired with its database in Argentina, located in the industrial city of Río Cuarto in the Córdoba province, they represent 30% of its profits.

Despite the size of the business and its energy consumption, the Canadian company only has 44 employees who contribute to Social Security in Paraguay, according to public records from the country’s Institute of Social Security.

In March, the company sold its Yguazu megafarm, Alto Paraná, to another company, Hive Digital Technologies, for $63 million. The CEO of Bitfarms, Ben Gagnon, told the press that they were redirecting their investments to the Global North due to Donald Trump’s support for the crypto sector.

The decision is being made in the context of regulatory changes at the global level. While China banned crypto mining and crypto currency transactions in 2021, El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender that year, only to later backtrack under pressure from the International Monetary Fund. In Argentina, the crypto sector was hit by an increase in electricity rates and the elimination of subsidies, in addition to the $Libra crypto currency scam promoted by President Javier Milei.

Residents fight back

Bitfarms’ financial report cite sound pollution and community opposition as risks to its operations, although it doesn’t mention the case of Villarrica nor the charges against one of its representatives in Paraguay, as required by transparency standards for publicly traded companies on the U.S. stock market.

When the noise increased at dawn, Héctor Pereira’s dogs barked more. In his home, 820 feet from the Bitfarms facility, no one could sleep. “It was infernal. The noise was everywhere, it penetrated the walls. It was six months of constant suffering,” he remembers.

Pereira is the president of the Santa Lucía neighborhood group Trompo Arasá, which was formed by the affected families. In July 2024, he filed a complaint against Bitfarms with the Villarrica municipal environmental department. He accompanied Viviana Aponte, who was then the director of the environmental department, to measure the sounds emitted by the plant, and they found that they rose above permitted levels.

Aponte was supposed to submit a report to the city court, but she failed to do so. “It hurts to say it, but our own municipality is complicit, instead of protecting the community,” says Pereira. After that, Bitfarms sponsored municipal events like a road race and a music festival.

But Pereira refused to give up, and in August, filed a complaint against Bitfarms with the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development (MADES). Officials inspected the farm on September 4 and noted that the company was taking steps towards mitigating noise pollution. A few days later, after judicial mediation, Bitfarms agreed to make acoustic adjustments to reduce the noise. But still, the noise continued, according to neighbors.

In October, three months after the complaint was filed with city government, Aponte took a second measurement that once again exceeded the maximum allowed by municipal ordinance. This time, she did file a complaint with the misdemeanor court. However, two months later, a judge dismissed the case against the company because another measurement was taken that complied with permitted standards.

The group of neighbors continued to plead their case. And eventually, it arrived at the office of Villarrica’s environmental prosecutor. In November, a representative of the plant, Juan Ignacio Marcilio, was charged for the emission of harmful noise, which can lead to a prison sentence of up to 10 years, in addition to a fine between five and 50 days’ wages (equivalent to $67 to $677), and the shutdown of the farm for nearly six months. At that point, Bitfarms reduced its noise emission, according to neighbors.

In March, the psychological studies of the neighbors to determine the effects of the noise on their mental health began. These conclusions should have been presented on May 14, but at the time this article went to press, they still haven’t been made public. The Bitfarms representative is waiting for the court decision on whether he and the company will face consequences.

Marcilio declined to be interviewed for this article, and a spokesperson for Bitfarms said that the company had worked closely with the Villarrica municipal government and the local community to resolve the issue. “The city had contacted us regarding the matter and is now satisfied,” the spokesperson said. “Bitfarms operates in full compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements in all jurisdictions where it has a presence.”

On April 4, 2025, the mayor of Villarrica, Magín Benítez, declared null and void the dismissal of Bitfarms issued by the misdemeanor court due to irregularities in the summary proceedings and ordered that the administrative case be reopened, taking into account all the evidence and parties involved.

Waiting for justice

The residents of Cañada San Juan stopped hearing the plant’s noise when the charges were brought against the Bitfarms representative. But it has left a mark. María Sol Arrúa, who lives 650 feet from the facility, is undergoing psychiatric treatment for post-traumatic stress and can’t hear loud noises without having a panic attack.

For psychologist Maureen Montanía, what happened in Villarrica calls for community-wide psychological intervention. She explains that the longer a person or community is exposed systematically to such a phenomenon, the more associations will remain in the brain and the longer the trauma lasts. “Exposure to noise does not just compromise an environment, but also entire life cycles, from children to seniors. Response from authorities and those responsible should be proportional to the damage caused. The brain cannot recover on its own,” she says.

Juan Enriquez, another resident who lodged complaints against Bitfarms, thinks that institutions should sanction those responsible and compensate the victims. Today, even if the noise has stopped, he feels like it’s not over. “I still have the anger. That isn’t going to be cured from one day to the other. The damage is done. The months of torture, when we couldn’t sleep, who will give them back to us?”

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