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Representative Michael Baumgartner recently praised the “Merkle Standard Data Center Project” in Usk as a regional economic win. But public filings and company actions tell a very different story.

The former Ponderay Newsprint Mill has been converted into a large-scale cryptocurrency-mining facility owned by Allrise Capital and operated as Merkle Standard, in partnership with Bitmain Technologies Ltd., a Beijing-based mining hardware firm. Bitmain has supplied the capital, hardware, and technical resources—equipment designed solely for Bitcoin mining, not “data-center services”.