Bitcoin miners power their operations with old coal-fired power plants in New York, raising environmental concerns

"In just a few years, a swath of northern and western New York has become one of the biggest Bitcoin producers in the country," Corey Kilgannon reports for The New York Times. "The prospectors in this digital gold rush need lots of cheap electricity to run thousands of energy-guzzling computer rigs. The area — with its cheap hydroelectric power and abundance of shuttered power plants and old factories — was ripe for Bitcoin mining. The abandoned infrastructure, often with existing connections to the power grid, can readily be converted for Bitcoin mining."

"The companies say they are boosting local economies by bringing industry back and creating a crypto vanguard north of New York City," Kilgannon reports. "But the surge of activity has also prompted a growing outcry over the amount of electricity and pollution involved in mining for Bitcoin. Globally, cryptocurrency mining is said to consume more electricity annually than all of Argentina. China, once home to perhaps two-thirds of all crypto mining, banned the practice this year to help achieve its carbon-reduction goals, driving some miners to New York." Read more here.