Apart from the crisis that the cryptocurrency sector is suffering from events such as the bankruptcy of the FTX cryptocurrency platform, the fall in the value of Bitcoin, among others, from New York City they focus more on the environmental aspect to have signed this past Tuesday a pioneering legislative measure in the United States.
This is a two-year moratorium by which new permits will not be granted for the establishment of power plants based on the use of fossil fuels to feed cryptocurrency mining centers.
Cryptocurrency mining requires a specialized and quite demanding computing infrastructure that requires large energy consumption to be able to computationally process cryptocurrency transactions of digital currencies such as bitcoin, among others.
According to a study by the US Energy Information Administration, it calculated that as of November 2018, bitcoin’s annual electricity consumption was similar to that of Hong Kong in 2019.
Seeking to meet climate goals
The exception will be for new power generation plants for cryptocurrency mining that use 100% renewable energy sources. According to Governor Kathy Hochul’s statement:
I will ensure that New York remains the center of financial innovation, while taking important steps to prioritize protecting our environment.
The new legislative measure has not gone down well with the cryptocurrency mining community.
Companies and organizations see in this legislative measure a limitation of the freedoms of cryptocurrency miners, raising a cry to heaven in their respective communiqués at the possibility that the legislative measures could become more restrictive in the future, and even reach to deter new cryptocurrency miners with power plants with 100% renewable sources to do business in the sector.
The new legislative measure also calls on the Department of Environmental Conservation to assess how cryptocurrency mining affects the state’s ability to meet its climate goals.
For their part, environmentalists complained at the time about the permissiveness of New York City in allowing cryptocurrency miners to exploit their own power generation plants using fossil fuels, which harms the achievement of objectives. climatic.
Cryptocurrency advocates believe the move will affect New York’s economic development, highlighting as part of that development the use of cryptocurrency regardless of the power sources used in the computer processing of cryptocurrency transactions.
Via: Gadgets 360
