New York’s Stance Against BTC Mining Just Passed The Senate

New York’s stance against Bitcoin mining has just passed the senate as the legislators were concerned about the environmental impact of the proof of work blockchains so let’s read more in our bitcoin news today.

The New York legislators were digging in for a fight on BTC mining and now the Senate Bill S6486B restricts the granting of permits to Bitcoin mining operations on environmental grounds passed the house by 36-27 margin with the bill sponsored by the Democratic Senator Kevin Parker who heads to the Democrat-controlled Assembly. The bill will place a three-year moratorium on BTC mining so that the state will do an environmental impact assessment and will have all but forced mining facilities in the state.

#NYSenate Bill S6486B, sponsored by @SenatorParker, passed (36-27, unofficial). Establishes a moratorium on consolidated operations that use proof-of-work authentication methods to validate blockchain transactions:https://t.co/P2gDKdPnL5

— New York State Senate (@NYSenate) June 8, 2021

The bill revises the state’s Environmental Conservation Law in order to prevent new operations from receiving permits to operate in the electric generating facility that utilizes carbon-based fuel and also caps the electrical consumption of existing mining operations at current levels and mandates the creation of a generic environmental impact statement on PoW mining. New York’s stance against BTC mining means that the new laws will not apply to BTC only but to any blockchain technology that will use proof of work consensus methods which refers to the energy-intensive process of committing computing power in order to validate transactions on the blockchain and create new tokens.

The bill’s authors are concerned about the new practices within New York state of repurposing old power plants for massive BTC mining operations which will include Greenidge Generation as a former coal-fired power plant that uses natural gas to mine BTC:

“Many fossil fuel power plants have been shut down across the state in recent years due to reduced energy demand, improved transmission capacity and non-economic carbon-based fuel sources. Consolidated operations that use proof-of-work authentication methods to validate blockchain transactions are bringing these plants back online, with behind- the-meter operations that greatly exceed the previous intermittent usage, and can cause significant negative impacts to air quality especially in environmental justice communities.”

As the Earth Justice Deputy Managing Attorney Mandy DeRoche said:

“They’re supposed to be dead power plants. They were retired for a reason.”