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. Popular Searches * 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.