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It’s been a wild few years for the cryptocurrency industry.
Citing the 2022 bankruptcy of crypto futures trader FTX, The Atlantic emphatically declared in early 2023 that crypto was over, following an intensive effort on the part of the industry to push itself into mainstream acceptance.
Then Donald Trump got reelected president and cryptocurrencies’ asset prices shot up. Having previously called crypto a scam, Trump did a heel turn in 2024 as he courted the tech right, vowing to make the United States the "crypto capital of the planet." In that year alone the combined value of all digital currencies doubled. Bitcoin, the crypto industry’s poster child, rode to a high value of $118,000 when just two years before it had been valued at $16,000.
The combined market capitalization of crypto is sky-high, and we’ve seen it ingratiate itself into mainstream acceptance by way of America’s financialized economy, which overlaps at times with the machinations of the state. Pension funds in Michigan and Wisconsin are holding bitcoin, the crypto industry contributed $119 million in 2024 to influence federal elections, and Trump himself is earning hundreds of millions of dollars from World Liberty Financial, a crypto company founded in 2024 and owned by a Trump business entity.1
The one thing that’s consistent about bitcoin? The carbon emissions put off by its production. As the digital currency’s asset price fluctuates, its emissions have steadily trended upward. In 2024 the University of Cambridge’s Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index clocked its annualized emissions at 62 megatons, equivalent to that of Serbia. Today it’s on track to produce over 85 megatons.
Enter the state of Oklahoma. In the middle of this 2024 crypto boom, state legislators passed House Bill 3594, which made Oklahoma one of the first states in the country to define legal terminology around crypto. But the law went further than has been publicly reported.
The new law effectively put up a giant billboard for crypto miners, who have been roaming the American countryside in search of the cheap energy, land and running water needed to power their mining operations. And as major tech companies scramble to meet the increased computing needs created by artificial intelligence — a technology whose financial returns remain unproven — these resources are coming under strain statewide.