© 2023 Concerned Citizens of Western Montana
We recently posted a 2022 video announcing a planned crypto mining data center to be located somewhere near Polson.
We would like to thank Greg Gianforte and Steve Daines for drawing attention to this news via their Daines sponsored “Montana on the Rise economic summit” held June 1-2, 2022 in Bozeman MT.
At the time, NBC news reported:
Multiple companies announced plans to build facilities and offices in the state, most notably Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary.
“The demand for data centers is insatiable,” O’Leary said. “Montana has all the elements you need: good leadership, good policy, great regulatory environment and people that want to do business.”
The 100% green bitcoin mining company Bitzero will build a 50-megawatt data center in Polson using hydroelectric power from the Seli’s Ksanka Qlispe’ Dam, formerly known as the Kerr Dam.
The company partnered with tribal leadership and plans to use the heat generated by the data center to produce food year-round.
“This is a big deal,” said Gov. Greg Gianforte. “It’s going to create jobs and opportunities for Montanans.”
There’s no timeline for this project yet, but O’Leary thanked state leaders for moving quickly to secure the partnership.
Imagine that. It appears that our “state leaders” moved even more quickly on a DATA CENTER PARTNERSHIP between the CSKT, the State and foreign investors than they did to cram the Flathead Water Compact upon the people of western Montana.
Keep in mind that all of that compact water, unable to be developed and coupled with Kerr Dam could be quite profitable for the “partners” involved. For as much as the compact wasn’t about the needs of the individual Indians, it clearly also is not about fish. It was about the federalization of our water for other uses.
What is a Crypto Mining Data Center?
According to datacenters.com the United States remains one of the more bitcoin friendly governments on the planet. Which means that a lot of miners who have previously set up shop in countries like China are now making their way stateside. How does this sudden influx of bitcoin mining, and the equipment necessary to perform it, affect data centers in the United States?
They explain Data Mining as this:
Money may not grow on trees, but you can create bitcoin through an effort called mining. In traditional currency, financial institutions verify transactions.
But with cryptocurrencies, anyone with a computer server can help to validate transactions. Computers work to solve cryptographic problems to ensure the legitimacy of ledger entries, and as a reward for this work, the bitcoin network rewards those who contribute to this process with bitcoins.
The more computers and servers you can operate, the more bitcoins you can earn. Many miners get their start simply by running one server out of their home.
However, expanding the mining operation means investing in a dedicated data center to operate bitcoin mining servers.
The media promotes these projects with the same tired old green energy, job creation talking points that every politician pulls out of their bag of tricks when they are forced to pretend that they are working in the interests of the people they “represent.”
Largely for this reason, the public isn’t connecting the dots to what Montana’s leadership is laying the foundation for throughout our state.
We would also bet the exact same foundation is being laid in most if not all of our 50 states.
Interestingly enough, there isn’t much out there that describes the effect it will have on the people who live around or near such facilities, or the negative effect of these data facilities on the consumption of power and the impact it will have on energy prices for average people. This very likely is by design.
Those involved with crypto mining and data centers want us to know all the “good” it will bring us, but predictably leave out of their stories the bad and the ugly of it.
We did find an article from the Daily Interlake that lays some of this out there for people to consider:
Crypto Proposal Needs More Due Diligence.
And we found this 2021 Article:
Iran bans bitcoin mining as its cities suffer blackouts and power shortages
This is Much Bigger than a Data Center
What we didn’t realize just a couple of weeks ago, is that the Polson data center story is much bigger than we could possibly have known. You could call it the tip of an iceberg.
This isn’t just about a data center, the Polson data center will be one of who knows how many that are planned?
The Butte / Anaconda area of the state appears to have been bombarded with plans for such facilities.
The Montana legislature, Bullock and Gianforte are working to establish the legislative infrastructure that will be necessary for such operations.
We need to follow the money on this.
For example the Polson data center is connected to Bitzero out of North Dakota.
Montana Businessmen building $1.9 billion crypto-mining center in North Dakota
Bitzero is also connected to Phoenix Technology out of Dubai.
Once you start digging you can easily see that vast amounts of money are being invested in these crypto mining and data center enterprises, so it is not a stretch to think that significant amounts of money are also being invested in state and federal political efforts to put forth legislation that will pave the way for the digital currency future that the globalists hope to force upon us when the federal reserve or federal government so deem it.
We believe that these efforts may also include our politicians who likely have invested in the digital currency frenzy as well. If that is indeed the case, they are shielded behind the corporate veil of the large number of companies investing crypto mining data centers. That same corporate veil also prevents the public from seeing what domestic and foreign entities are investing in the plunder of our state’s resources.
If Greg and Steve invested in any of these crypto investment companies, it is likely we may never know.
As you can see this really has little to do with green energy or creating jobs. It’s more about the donor and political class aligning themselves to financially benefit from the usurpation of vast amounts of natural and electrical resources of the states.
By getting in the game early, they will also have the added benefit of being well positioned to exploit even more wealth when the United States moves forward to make crypto money its reserve currency.
This is all about exploiting domestic state resources for the enrichment of the elite and the political class to the detriment of everyone else.
Who do you think will be on the losing side of these data centers when there isn’t enough electricity to go around? The investors in this monetary infrastructure not only have vast amounts of money to pay for the power, they also have the backing of Congress and apparently state legislatures.
We’ve been following the Congressional money laundering scams for far too long to think otherwise. This is no different than the Congressional foreign aid money laundering scheme that George W created with the Millennium Challenge Corporation designed to exploit and usurp the resources of countries all around the world.
CSKT’s Position on the Data Center News
For the record, the CSKT are playing coy on this. According to a Daily Interlake article, a tribal attorney conveyed that the Tribal Council is doing its “due diligence” to see if it makes financial sense to move forward with the project.
However we would like to point out that in 2019, the same tribal attorney and then state representative Shane Morigeau introduced a bill to “generally revise laws related to crypto currency.”
In the bill, Montana recognized utility tokens and exempted them from state securities. It passed, and Steve Bullock signed it into law.
In 2023, tribal attorney and now state senator Shane Morigeau lauded the Montana legislature for passing legislation introduced by republican senator Daniel Zolnikov that helps Montana “lead the way on cryptocurrency framework.” Gianforte signed it into law in May, 2023.
It is abundantly clear that the state legislative infrastructure for this coming economic “boom” is already being established.
The water resources that Montana gave away in the Flathead Water Compact, coupled with the Kerr Dam and Flathead Project infrastructure are a perfect match for the crypto industry. If Morigeau’s efforts are any indication, the CSKT are more than happy to participate in that process.
Oh but wait, there is more.
Energy Keepers v Hyperblock LLC
First a small bit of history about Kerr Dam:
When Kerr Dam was originally licensed, the Energy Commission went through great pains to review the applications for a license, and to ensure that all of the interests for which it was created would be served.
The BIA 1930 report titled Flathead Power Development correctly laid out four interests that were to be served by the dam:
Thus, in the case of Flathead, the Federal Power Commission and the Secretary of the Interior are called upon to make an adjustment between four interests, 1) successful Licensee profits, 2) the Indian tribe, which is entitled to a fair rental for the use of the power sites; 3) the particular part of the public forming the irrigation project, and to which certain low rates for power up to 15,000 horsepower have been promised in exchange for the dam’s use of the Flathead Irrigation and Power Project’s power water right and 4) the general consuming public for recreational and low cost electricity.
These very diverse interests, each of them important, are tied to various provisions written into the FERC license that has operated the dam for nearly a century. Energy Keepers is operating on the same license as the dam’s previous owners, so those requirements have not changed.
With its control over Kerr Dam, the CSKT now have two of these bases covered. Because the tribal government is seemingly unaccountable to such things as the law, the constitution and FERC licenses, what will happen when and if they stop serving the other two interests?
We have to ask if it possible that the releases of water in May of this year were for the purpose of feeding power to crypto companies downstream, ignoring the needs of the irrigation project and the general public including the recreational aspects of the lake that are provided for within the FERC license?
First we found this:
And then we found this:
Why this Montana crypto miner refuses to pay a $3.7M power bill?
According to the article:
Project Spokane, a Montana-based mining firm that has been sued by tribal-owned electricity company Energy Keepers Inc. for $3.7 million in unpaid power bills, claims the debt is not its responsibility.
On Dec. 14, Project Spokane requested that a Montana federal judge nix the lawsuit, asserting that Hyperblock LLC — a company that purchased most of the mining firm’s assets in 2018 — is liable for the debt.
However, Hyperblock declared bankruptcy in March following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Project Spokane and Hyperblock share an owner.
The suit, which was filed by Energy Keepers, or EKI, in May, alleges that Project Spokane used its deal with Hyperblock LLC to conspire against paying the power provider for the electricity it consumed.
Here is a copy of the complaint filed by Energy Keepers in this lawsuit if you are interested. Please note that these documents are made publicly available on the internet through PACER. We have several other documents for the case but this one gives the background history:
Complaint: EKI v Hyperblock LLC
Docket: EKI v Hyperblock LLC
The complaint shows that the CSKT contracted to sell energy with this company in 2016.
First we can’t help but wonder if it will be the taxpayers or power users that could end up taking the hit for losses such as this through some backdoor federal reimbursement via our congressional delegation.
Our bit of research on these data centers indicated that some of the Butte Data Centers are tied to the Cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the scandal pertaining to its founder and former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. It is said that the swift and damaging collapse of FTX in late 2022 will have repercussions on the international crypto community for years to come.
But more importantly for the locals, what will happen if the data center is built in Polson and an additional 25% of the dam’s power is committed for that purpose?
What will this mean to the irrigation project’s low cost block of power? The tribe already took half of it in the water compact, will they make a unilateral decision to scrap the remaining half of it in lieu of crypto power sales?
How will local electric consumers be able to compete with these large crypto companies and their ability to pay far more for the electricity than local people can afford?
We hope that Montana’s Public Service Commission is already on top of this issue, and working with the Montana legislature to take steps to protect the people from an onslaught of private investors in data centers and the diversion and usurpation of our energy resources before the damage is done.
This clearly is a race against time. Just like the Flathead Water Compact, the political class and the elites are hoping that the damage will already be done before people ever know what hit them.
For more links and additional information about this issue See: Daines Doing His Part on Crypto
Western Montana Water Rights 
Montana Crypto Data Centers may be coming to a dam near you……….
Thank you so much for this powerful information.
May need to publish your next article on how to single-handedly stop a runaway train. We, the people – tribal and everyone else – have little hope in stopping this money grab by the tribal leadership and the politicos of Montana. We are truly living in extraordinary times and all outside of CSKT and the governmental “leaders” of this state are in peril.
Could this be the reason for Daines latest effort to streamline building new power projects? Remember the CSKT also got a bunch of dam sites in the compact
Thanks for making that connection.
Yes we believe so. When Daines announced that legislation it went immediately to our minds too.
Laugh out loud, maybe in the Klamath the crazies got ahead of themselves pulling out the dams there and are now kicking themselves.
Yes, thank you for one more disturbing expose of those who are supposed to represent us. Hate to use the word “conspiracy”, but it certainly applies here and it seems so complex and so deep I wonder if we, the people, could ever uncover all of it or remedy past and future damages. I guess as long as they feel like no one they represent will do anything to them, why stop?
We play by the rules and they dont. Maybe something should change.
One thing we come across when doing our research is the fact that for the most part this stuff isn’t covered in traditional media sources.
You have to dig for it the multitude of financial and tech / crypto sites that have sprung up on the internet.
It is as though the paths between the ugly stories about crypto do not cross with traditional media. This is why people will never know what hit them.
Traditional media only covers the politicians patting themselves on the back.
There is little doubt that Steve Daines and Greg Gianforte are still “business” partners. One is laying the foundation within the state, and the other is laying it via Congress.
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