Wow, Robbie K is an idiot.

I tried to comment on the article, but it looks like you need an account.

Robbie K, what is a waste of resources? Do you mean the bitcoin mining being the thing that is wasting resources? If so, you don't understand how bitcoin mining works. It is exactly the thing that incentivizes the creation of power plants like these in areas where it would otherwise be uneconomic to build them. The communities in the story above benefit by finally being able to get cheap electricity and the companies that place the power plants get bitcoin in return. It is a win-win.

The people of that village get electricity for the first time in their lives too. So that is not a waste of resources either.

While you might think that bitcoin is completely speculative or worthless, that doesn't matter. At the present time, each bitcoin is worth roughly $60k USD. A company is willing to spend real resources to construct these power plants so the reward of getting bitcoin must be worth something to them.

You seem to think that the energy these power plants are producing should be put to better use than mining bitcoin.

Maybe you think the power should go 100% to the local community? What you seem like you don't understand is that these power plants only exist because of the mining for bitcoin. When a power plant generates electricity, it has to go somewhere. It must be either be consumed or stored. Companies would have no incentive to build power plants in these remote areas because there would be such little demand for the electricity and no place for the excess energy to go. Bitcoin mining finally makes it economical to build these power plants, basically give the electricity away for free to the community that it is in, and then use the large amount of excess power to mine bitcoin.