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New York Power Companies Can Now Charge Bitcoin Miners More (arstechnica.com)
Last Wednesday, the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) ruled that municipal power companies could charge higher electricity rates to cryptocurrency miners who try to benefit from the state's abundance of cheap hydroelectric power. Ars Technica reports: Over the years, Bitcoin's soaring price has drawn entrepreneurs to mining. Bitcoin mining enterprises have become massive endeavors, consuming megawatts of power on some grids. To minimize the cost of that considerable power draw, mining companies have tried to site their operations in towns with cheap electricity, both in the U.S. and around the world. In the U.S., regions with the cheapest energy tend to be small towns with hydroelectric power. But mining booms in small U.S. towns are not always met with approval. A group of 36 municipal power authorities in northern and western New York petitioned the PSC for permission to raise electricity rates for cryptocurrency miners because their excessive power use has been taxing very small local grids and causing rates to rise for other customers. The PSC responded on Wednesday that it would allow those local power companies to raise rates for cryptocurrency miners. The response noted that New York's local power companies, which are customer-owned and range in size from 1.5 MW to 122 MW, "acquire low-cost power, typically hydro, and distribute the power to customers at no profit." If a community consumes more than what has been acquired, cost increases are passed on to all customers. "In Plattsburgh, for example, monthly bills for average residential customers increased nearly $10 in January because of the two cryptocurrency companies operating there," the PSC document says. The city of Plattsburgh, New York has since imposed an 18-month moratorium on commercial cryptocurrency mining to "protect and enhance the city's natural, historic, cultural and electrical resources."
Wasting energy to participate in a pyramid scheme is not a basic need.
Neither is watching porn or playing video games.
Just cut/cap their power supply.
Or maybe power companies should not be policing morality. As long as I pay my bill, what I do with the power is none of their concern.
For a while, I tried to ignore people (on a tech site) expressing how ignorant they are about cryptocurrencies. Ain't got no time for long for long rant, "Unbound computer work for reward" is a side-effect of securing system against bad actors, have hopes of lightening network solving parts of this. Also Proof of Work is not the only way to go, Proof of Stake, Delegated Proof of Stake, Byzantine Fault Tolerance and Directed Acyclic Graph, etc are also out there. So you could try reading up a bit before shooting your mouth about cryptocurrencies.
I did not know how far this would go.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
You know what's funny? Here in my 3rd world country, I could apply for Industrial power, pay an installation tax for 380V power and then mine away as much as I desire, while paying FAR LESS per KW/h than a home user would.
I guess 'murica has it backwards...
America is mostly like that too. I think we should be going the opposite direction though. I think we should stop giving bulk discounts for electricity or maybe even charge more for electricity to heavy users. If we are really concerned with conservation, charging that same if not more for energy usage to heavy users would help reduce the demand for fossil fuels where it matters.