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I'm enjoying reading this "but they help the small towns they're in" spin Coindesk and Greenridge are going for. There are plenty of other bitcoin miners in Ne

I'm enjoying reading this "but they help the small towns they're in" spin Coindesk and Greenridge are going for. There are plenty of other bitcoin miners in New York that do nothing to improve their host communities. I look to the mines at the top of the state, some of the largest ones like Coinmint that have barely any employees on the books and give nothing to the community, and in fact, continues to harm its local communities by essentially "hogging" low-cost power allocations that put the rest of the community's power prices in danger. They destroyed Plattsburgh, now they're coming for even smaller, more vulnerable villages like Massena. If I paid for part of a new CT scanner, a Jaws of Life, a playground, and an LED sign, I'm sure people would think highly of my bullshit Delaware shell company, too. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/18/1049331/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-cryptomining-new-york/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/18/1049331/bitcoin-...

latchkey 3y ago
> in fact, continues to harm its local communities by essentially "hogging" low-cost power allocations that put the rest of the community's power prices in danger. I've been to coinmint and know how they get their power. That isn't fact or truth. Their power comes directly from the Moses-Saunders dam via dedicated high voltage lines that they actually pay quite a lot on transmission costs (aka: maintenance of the lines and the dam). You can literally trace the lines from the dam to the plant, in google maps. On top of it, the local area is really spread out (sparsely populated) and doesn't have that large of power requirements. Especially not compared with the Alcoa plant that was once there. You can't just direct the power elsewhere... if they could, it would have already been done decades ago. I don't know what is expected there to 'give back'... Massena is a tiny community and doesn't have much in terms of qualified employees. I know that coinmint has had a lot of issues with people they've hired in the past. When I was doing all my research on the area there wasn't even local schools that you could hire from. If anything the fact that the place is so remote, is a major problem and part of why coinmint isn't a lot larger.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Every watt consumed must be created, and every extra watt a bitcoin mining operation uses is a watt that can't do anything else. And using "surplus" energy merely keeps electricity expensive. Bitcoin wasting power is as designed. Having to use up a certain amount of watt/hours per operation is the entire "protection" mechanism built into the bitcoin protocol. Mining operations have few employees because there isn't much work to do.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    > Every watt consumed must be created, and every extra watt a bitcoin mining operation uses is a watt that can't do anything else. And using "surplus" energy merely keeps electricity expensive. No, that's not how large scale commercial power works. Please study the history of the Moses-Saunders dam. I've been to the Hawkins Point Visitors Center and studied the history, have you? > Bitcoin wasting power is as designed. 'wasting' is the wrong word there. It is converting power into work in order to validate blocks of transactions. We have tellers in banks who drive their cars into nice air conditioned offices every single day, that effectively do the same thing. Is that also wasting power in your eyes? > Mining operations have few employees because there isn't much work to do. Speaking as someone who's run very large mining operations, that is untrue. There is a ton of work, but it also requires relatively skilled labor since most of the ongoing work is maintenance of the equipment. Of course it doesn't require hundreds of people like the old aluminum smelters, but it also isn't creating a superfund site. I don't see why computerized solutions should be expected to create massive amounts of jobs over the long term. Massena is in the middle of nowhere upstate NY and was decimated when the Alcoa plants shut down. Population in 2010 is a whopping 12k. The people who are left are trained as factory aluminum smelters, not computer technicians.
    - kotaKat 3y ago
      > I don't see why computerized solutions should be expected to create massive amounts of jobs over the long term. Because that's what Coinmint dangled over Massena village and town administrators to coerce them into handing over the Alcoa property and power allocations without knowing what they were doing. I sure wonder where those "150 jobs" are that Coinmint said they'd hire here.

latchkey 3y ago

> in fact, continues to harm its local communities by essentially "hogging" low-cost power allocations that put the rest of the community's power prices in danger. I've been to coinmint and know how they get their power. That isn't fact or truth. Their power comes directly from the Moses-Saunders dam via dedicated high voltage lines that they actually pay quite a lot on transmission costs (aka: maintenance of the lines and the dam). You can literally trace the lines from the dam to the plant, in google maps. On top of it, the local area is really spread out (sparsely populated) and doesn't have that large of power requirements. Especially not compared with the Alcoa plant that was once there. You can't just direct the power elsewhere... if they could, it would have already been done decades ago. I don't know what is expected there to 'give back'... Massena is a tiny community and doesn't have much in terms of qualified employees. I know that coinmint has had a lot of issues with people they've hired in the past. When I was doing all my research on the area there wasn't even local schools that you could hire from. If anything the fact that the place is so remote, is a major problem and part of why coinmint isn't a lot larger.

mrguyorama 3y ago
Every watt consumed must be created, and every extra watt a bitcoin mining operation uses is a watt that can't do anything else. And using "surplus" energy merely keeps electricity expensive. Bitcoin wasting power is as designed. Having to use up a certain amount of watt/hours per operation is the entire "protection" mechanism built into the bitcoin protocol. Mining operations have few employees because there isn't much work to do.
- latchkey 3y ago
  > Every watt consumed must be created, and every extra watt a bitcoin mining operation uses is a watt that can't do anything else. And using "surplus" energy merely keeps electricity expensive. No, that's not how large scale commercial power works. Please study the history of the Moses-Saunders dam. I've been to the Hawkins Point Visitors Center and studied the history, have you? > Bitcoin wasting power is as designed. 'wasting' is the wrong word there. It is converting power into work in order to validate blocks of transactions. We have tellers in banks who drive their cars into nice air conditioned offices every single day, that effectively do the same thing. Is that also wasting power in your eyes? > Mining operations have few employees because there isn't much work to do. Speaking as someone who's run very large mining operations, that is untrue. There is a ton of work, but it also requires relatively skilled labor since most of the ongoing work is maintenance of the equipment. Of course it doesn't require hundreds of people like the old aluminum smelters, but it also isn't creating a superfund site. I don't see why computerized solutions should be expected to create massive amounts of jobs over the long term. Massena is in the middle of nowhere upstate NY and was decimated when the Alcoa plants shut down. Population in 2010 is a whopping 12k. The people who are left are trained as factory aluminum smelters, not computer technicians.
  - kotaKat 3y ago
    > I don't see why computerized solutions should be expected to create massive amounts of jobs over the long term. Because that's what Coinmint dangled over Massena village and town administrators to coerce them into handing over the Alcoa property and power allocations without knowing what they were doing. I sure wonder where those "150 jobs" are that Coinmint said they'd hire here.