In a recent county commission meeting, a moratorium on commercial bitcoin mining was passed. The moratorium makes it illegal for an entity to run a cryptocurrency mining algorithm if it meets the following criteria:

1. Contains 3 or more interconnected computers.
2. Is operated for commercial purposes.

If it isn’t immediately apparent the breadth of what the commissioners have voted to ban, here is a photograph of three computers that can be interconnected, can be used to mine cryptocurrency, and are owned by a commercial entity.

Why would the commissioners write a moratorium that would ban a particular algorithm from running on these three computers that can fit in the palm of your hand? It all goes back to a complaint by Cassie and Dereck Ranes, who reside in the county. (It isn’t clear exactly when they moved in, but tax records show they made their first tax payment on a modular home in January of 2025.) In 2024, a company called Evolution Technology, LLC leased a gas well across the road from them and at some point after January of 2024 put a large generator on it to run a bitcoin mining operation.

The Ranes say the sound of the generator is unbearable, even to the point of making it difficult to sleep. While the Ranes have standing to seek resolution in civil court under existing Kansas nuisance laws, they have not chosen to exercise that option. The county does not currently have standing to do anything on their behalf. The Ranes and other neighbors asked for this moratorium to prevent any new bitcoin mining operations from being started. A moratorium does nothing to deal with existing businesses operating in the county and would only stop new installations from operating.

Imagine that you have a problem with cars driving by the front of your house at high speeds. You go to the commissioners to complain and mention that there is a red car that drives by really fast. The commissioners could tell you to talk to law enforcement about laws that were being broken. They could change the speed limit to 45 mph to help slow people down. They might even have the county put a speed bump in front of your house. Those would all be things related to the speed issue.

But what if instead they passed a moratorium on registering cars that match the particular shade of red that you mentioned? What would that do?

1. It would deprive everyone in the county of the freedom to buy a car of a particular color.
2. It would introduce a huge burden of compliance with silly rules that would need to be enforced by someone.
3. It would require the commissioners to spend time and attention doing things that individual citizens can better handle for themselves and away from things that only commissioners can do (deal with benefits, understand the budgeting process, make sure the payroll service they selected can handle the county needs, etc.).

Would it address the actual problem in any way? No. Absolutely not.

Is the car example just silliness, or is it a good proxy for what the county is doing with this moratorium?

When the commissioners wrote the moratorium, the problem at hand was noise, but they inexplicably wrote and passed a resolution that doesn’t contain a single parameter, guideline, or requirement related to noise. Instead, they banned an algorithm with parameters that encompass hardware that a middle schooler might run in their bedroom. (Though the middle schooler might be able to claim they are not operating commercially when law enforcement shows up at their door.)

Would the moratorium keep a company from putting another loud generator on another gas well they have leased? Absolutely not. The moratorium is completely orthogonal to the use of generators, production of sound, or pretty much anything else that is causing an issue. They could put in another installation, exactly like they have now, and run a different algorithm on it. For example, their setup would be perfect for training large language models.

I suppose the commissioners could try to pass another moratorium this time to ban a different algorithm. If they used a similar definition, they could ban people with a job working on AI training models who happen to have more than three computers in their home. The commissioners can play whack-a-mole with various algorithms without ever actually addressing the underlying problem. What if the commissioners finally decide to ban any GPU installation capable of more than 20,000 tera hashes per second? That would take care of the noise problem, right? Well, no. The generator can still be used to charge electric vehicles, pump water for irrigation, and all the other things that electricity can be used for.

While the moratorium is a bit silly with problems a crypto-savvy high-school student could have pointed out, it seems unlikely it could legally be applied to everything it technically applies to. However, I believe it points to a much bigger problem with the direction the commissioners are trying to go with zoning. As I’ve mentioned before, under the best conditions, maybe zoning would have some positive aspect for the county. There is some theoretical possible future where zoning does more good things than it does bad. But this moratorium illustrates that there are many more possible futures where zoning creates a huge mess.

How do we know what type of future zoning would have in Bourbon County? This moratorium is a good way to predict what would be a probable future. With full access to legal counsel and citizens who are willing to look over technical details, the commissioners managed to pass a moratorium that is completely divorced from the actual problem they were trying to address and is so broad that it covers things people run under their desks and even things that would fit in the palm of your hand.

In an effort to pass a moratorium quickly, no one stopped to consider what was actually in the documents they were signing. Imagine that same type of decision-making process being applied in the future with an expanded set of powers under zoning. This particular example is relatively benign, but it should serve as a warning about where the commission is trying to take the county with zoning.

Mark Shead

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