William Shatner Wants to Open A Bitcoin Farm In Illinois

Set phasers to "Make Money" (Sorry if that joke doesn't make sense, I've never seen Star Trek. More of a Star Wars guy.)

ChicagoTribune - The former Star Trek actor is the spokesman for the alternative energy developer Solar Alliance... the company plans to convert an abandoned label-making factory in Murphysboro into a solar-powered bitcoin mining operation.

The abandoned factory in Murphysboro is 165,000 square feet and the solar power will be used to power the "mining" computers.

There are 2 things I know about Bitcoin:

1) It takes a LOT of energy to mine the coins. Some studies say that by the end of the year Bitcoin mining will consume up to half of the world's energy consumption. That claim sounds ludicrous at face value but that's probably because you don't know that much about Bitcoin mining. Which leads me to the second thing I know about Bitcoin.

2) I have no idea how Bitcoin works. I mean I get the general concept. Decentralized currency sounds like a pretty good idea at face value. The whole mining concept? No idea. I've tried. I know there's a blockchain element. There's a public ledger. That's about it. I've spent hours on Youtube trying to figure it out but my small brain just can't wrap itself around the concept. This is probably the best video I found:

But to be honest it really only raises more questions than answers for me.

So I hope Bill Shatner knows more than I do for his sake. Maybe he's just a big name with money to get the project moving. No idea. I'm not even sure if this will be good for the state on a financial level. Can you tax Bitcoins produced in your state? Does that sentence even make sense? Who knows. This is why I'll never be filthy rich. This and the fact that I refuse to play the lottery.

You've made it this far in this blog. How about a reward? Like I said, I've never seen an episode of Star Trek but if it's anywhere close to as electric as this video is it should have won all the Emmys.