New York State local businesses rally against Crypto Mining Centers

The New York State’s local businesses, labor groups, and several organizations have come together against allotting the city’s old fossil-fuel power plants to build crypto mining centers. The State’s Governor, Kathy Hochul received a letter from these businesses appealing to deny permits to transform the Greenidge Generating Station and the Fortistar North Tonawanda power plants into crypto mining farms. The letter’s subject requested for an environmental assessment of Proof-of-Work Cryptocurrency Mining in NYS, followed by the denial of permits for crypto mining farms.

“Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining use enormous amounts of energy to power the computers needed to conduct business – should this activity expand in New York, it could drastically undermine New York’s climate goals established under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.”

The letter stated that both the facilities listed for conversion do not comply with the state’s climate law and therefore should be denied permits. Furthermore, the letter highlighted how “re-powering” defunct fossil-fueled power plants could seriously jeopardize the state’s past progress along with meeting future mandates for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These local businesses have also mentioned the New York Times report, that claimed, ‘Bitcoin mining globally consumes more electricity than the entire country of Ireland, which is almost 0.5% of all electricity consumption worldwide.’

“New York must halt this move to turn old fossil-fuel-powered plants into crypto mining centers until a full environmental assessment is conducted on the impact that these operations will have on greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the state’s air and water quality.”

Chinese Crypto Mining Crackdown

One of the core reasons for China’s historical crypto ban is the decentralized market’s enormous energy consumption. While all crypto activities are under attack in China, cryptocurrency mining has taken a rather steep fall as compared to others. The Chinese government is also preparing to add crypto mining to the “Negative List” of industries. This would mean that the crypto mining industry will be banned or restricted from any investment from both, mainland China investors as well as foreign investors. Additionally, the government is also tracking IP addresses to filter out illicit crypto mining activities in the country, which has led to shutdowns across the Chinese territory.