Cryptocurrency has crept into Western New York almost unnoticed.
To quote one of Digihost’s internet blurbs, “Today, the company owns 11,800 miners with more being added all the time.
Each new block is based on the previous one and the whole forms a chain.
The complexity of the computation required, and the growing number of miners, requires amazing quantities of electricity.
Digihost’s reviving the Fortistar fossil-fuel plant, rather than letting it die a natural death, promises to make it harder for Western New York to become carbon free.
Greenidge at Dresden on Seneca Lake, a similarly revitalized fossil fuel plant, is currently powering one of the largest Bitcoin mining operations in the United States.
Parker, D-Brooklyn, would put a three-year moratorium on Bitcoin mining in New York State, lifted only if it “will not adversely affect” New York’s carbon-cutting benchmarks.