I'm going with Stephen's explanation. The U.S. NGS has determined (by balancing a cardboard cutout, your tax dollars hard at work
) that the center of the contiguous U.S. is Lebanon, KS (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_center_of_the_contiguous_United_States). Lebanon is 200 miles northwest of Wichita. By averaging the extreme latitudes and longitudes of the lower 48 states, I came up with Copan, OK, 135 miles southeast of Wichita, as the center. Google probably uses a slightly different algorithm.
So it's unlikely the NSA has a secret, underground bunker in rural Kansas where they are logging the originating IP addresses of all transactions. My guess is they are doing that from Virginia.
Yeah, whatever. I just saw a banner ad from Bold Software on the bitcoincharts site and I think I've figured out why so much bitcoin is flowing through Wichita based servers.
Fact 1: Bold Software is in Wichita.
Fact 2: Bold Software is an online chat provider.
Fact 3: People say and do do things in chat rooms for bitcoin all over the world.
The world's oldest profession seems to me to be a lot simpler than all of that mathematical mumbo jumbo you guys are talking about above. Cardboard, really?