FEATURE-U.S. small towns take on energy-guzzling bitcoin miners
Reuters
2 hrs ago
* Bitcoin miners clash with environment groups in the U.S.
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* Montana town becomes first to regulate crypto climate impact
By Avi Asher-Schapiro
LOS ANGELES, May 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In mid-April, nearly 150 local environmentalists marched to the gates of Greenidge Generation, a bitcoin mining facility in upstate New York, in a last-ditch effort to block its expansion.
Their objection: that the creation of the cryptocurrency, an energy-intensive process in which computers compete to solve mathematical puzzles, may harm efforts to limit global warming.
Three days later, the planning board in the small town of Torrey voted 4-1 to allow Greenidge Generation to more than double the number of machines it has mining bitcoin.