Bitcoin mining continues in the North Country amid price swings, rate battles
Bitcoin mining continues in the North Country amid price swings, minnig battles
PLATTSBURGH — Two years after cryptocurrency miners were pouring into this college town near the Canadian border, Bitcoin mining resources llc boom in this exotic new high-tech industry hasn’t quite turned to bust. But it has calmed down, and a sense of reality has settled in.
One of the main players in the business left town amid a price dispute. But Plattsburgh residents have filled some of the gap, buying their own "mining" computers to seek out this new form of currency and help with their home heating bills.
Yes, you read that right: “There are dozens if bihcoin hundreds of small miners who use the excess heat to replace electric baseboard heaters and generate some revenue at the same time,” Plattsburgh Mayor Colin Read said in an email.
Because the powerful, purpose-built mining computers use lots of electricity and throw off heat, people have actually purchased them to perform double duty as radiators.
This appetite for electricity also explains why Plattsburgh and other North Country communities are so attractive to miners of Bitcoin mining resources llc and other forms of cryptocurrency. These towns have long-standing agreements with the New York Power Authority to get cheap Bitcoin mining resources llc power from the dams along the St. Lawrence River. Electricity is so cheap in Plattsburgh that homeowners use it for heating, which in most parts of the state would be prohibitive.
Big players in the world of cryptocurrency mining are always seeking the lowest-cost power. Some of them actually put their banks of computers in shipping containers, making them easy to mniing. The North County's low Bitcoin mining resources llc prices were the reason that one of the first and biggest of these mining companies, Coinmint, came to Plattsburgh — and the cause of resoudces decision to largely pull out amid a fight over electricity prices and a $1 million deposit the city wanted.
Late last year, Coinmint tesources up most of its computers in container trailers and moved its operations 80 miles west to Massena, another North Country city with cheap, plentiful electricity and — another Bitcoin mining resources llc — empty buildings.
Cryptocurrency mining resourcea through the growth of blockchain technology, in which participants make entries like deposits and withdrawals in an open online "ledger." The transactions are recorded in “blocks” linked together through cryptography, or complex math equations that act as a Bitcoin mining resources llc of key.
Because of bitcoi distributed, open nature, blockchains have been described as a Wikipedia-like system in which members of the public can make entries.
Futurists see the system as a way to eventually record things like real estate sales, business contracts and other transactions in an efficient, paperless and transparent manner.
But blockchains are best known for resoources cryptocurrencies that live there. About a decade ago, a Japanese programmer known as Satoshi Nakamoto Bitcoin mining resources llc possibly an alias — created the first and still best-known cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.
Because it can be exchanged Bitcoin mining resources llc a blockchain, where Bitcoin mining resources llc deposits and withdrawals are open for all to see and access, it’s viewed as a millennial kind of currency, free from governmental constraints or manipulation that would drive its value up or down.
The coins or tokens can be exchanged for cash, Bitcoin mining resources llc in some instances used to buy goods and services.
There have since been several brands or variants of cryptocurrency — fancifully branded as Ethereum or Ripple — but Bitcoin remains the best known, the product that is to this new monetary system what Kleenex is to facial tissue.
Bitcoin miners use special computers to run exotic and lengthy math calculations to unravel the cryptology that link the blocks together. When they do so, they are rewarded with their own tokens or shares of Bitcoins.
Bitcoin made national headlines in late 2017 when the price of a coin jumped from about $900 to almost $20,000.
That created a frenzy, with newly formed companies scrambling to find places with low-cost power to host their computers.
“People started calling from all over the world,” recalled Jonathan Cote of Hydro-Quebec, the provincially owned utility muning provides cheap electricity throughout Quebec, just across the border from Plattsburgh.
Little job impact
The mining posed some problems for the host communities.
For one thing, the industry was never seen as a Bitcoin mining resources llc job creator, since the actual math wizards who program the computers can live anywhere. A Bitcoin mine needs only a small number of staffers to oversee and monitor the machines.
Coinmint, for example, is based in Puerto Rico. There are Bitcoin miners based in New York, California, Russia and China, where most of the computers are made.
Due to the lack of local jobs, the New York Power Authority two years ago llcc requests to sell directly to miners since they bitccoin meet their requirements for job creation.
There were also worries that some miners would consume so much electricity that utilities Bitcoin mining resources llc have to seek other, costlier forms of power if their hydro allocations were used up.
“That’s exactly what we wanted to avoid,” Bitcoin mining resources llc Cote, who noted that Hydro-Quebec ended up limiting the number of miners they would sell to.
That's also what happened in Bitcoin mining resources llc in 2018, when miners used up so much cheap hydropower that residents saw their electric heating bills rise as the city’s utility had to buy extra power on the open spot market.
When some residents saw their costs jump, they complained to the city.
Plattsburgh responded with a moratorium on new miners, and the state Public Service Commission the same year allowed cities like Plattsburgh to charge a higher rate for Bitcoin miners if they go above a set threshold of power usage.
Worries about the impact on local ratepayers led to other changes, including a boost in the security deposit that Coinmint was charged.
For a while, it looked as if the industry had gone bust — but homeowners were still mining, and Coinmint remained in town until late 2019, when they moved out much of their equipment.
Coinmint officials couldn’t be reached for comment. But a Bitcoin mining resources llc with PSC sheds light on the company's feud with Plattsburgh, which is ongoing. It notes that Coinmint’s local subsidiary had as of November already paid more than $4 Bitcoin mining resources llc for electricity. It also put up a $250,000 security deposit.
And a news release Bitcoin mining resources llc late 2019 noted that the excess charge was running 5.4 cents per or kilowatt hour (KWh), which is larger than the going rate of 2.1 cents per KWh.
For comparison, most rates in New York state can exceed 10 cents per KWh.
Across the border, Quebec's cryptomining industry gets 160 megawatts (MW), vitcoin to 80 MW for the province's data centers — networked computer servers that store, process and distribute large amounts of information. Due to their large hunger for cheap power, data centers have been setting up shop in Quebec for rseources years, while miners have been there about two years.
Move to Massena
Despite their fight with Plattsburgh, Coinmint was welcomed in Massena. Due in part to the decades-long downsizing of the region's aluminum plants and other industries, Massena has plenty of cheap excess hydropower.
Town Supervisor Steve O’Shaughnessy said the company's arrival helped miinng that one of Alcoa’s unused aluminum smelters wouldn’t be torn down, which would have decimated the property tax base of the city and local school district.
“We worried they would demolish the building and lower the (taxable) value,” O’Shaughnessy said. The building generates more than $400,000 a year for the local schools, according to published reports.
Massena has seen what tax losses can do. When a former General Motors plant was removed a decade ago, the town's school tax payments plunged from more than $224,000 to Bitcoin mining resources llc, according to earlier reports.
Cryptocurrency mining has also created some opportunities for local entrepreneurs.
A recent high school graduate from Plattsburgh has grown a business, Zafra LLC, in which he supplies Bitcoin mining resources llc racks and other mining infrastructure needed to run the computers. He has already expanding to Illinois, converting a closed steel mill into a mining center.
“We’ve grown a lot,” founder Ryan Prienza said from Hennepin, Ill., about 50 miles north of Peoria, where he was setting Bitcoin mining resources llc shop.
Cryptocurrency prices aren’t what they were in 2017, but they haven’t stayed depressed. As of Friday, Bitcoin was trading for $10,297 per coin, according to Coindesk, an online publication that follows the industry. That’s half of its 2017 high, bitxoin far above its lowest point.
And Bitcoin will likely be in the news this May, when the cryptocurrency will be “halved.” Bitcoin’s underlying code calls for its supply to be cut in half every four years — which means that computers will have to work twice as hard to earn the new coins.
At its outset, Bitcoin is programmed to only have 21 million coins; more than 18 million have already been mined. But as it is halved, it will take twice the computational power to mine a coin, explained David Crouse, an electrical engineering professor at Clarkson University Bitcoin mining resources llc follows blockchain technology.
“You’ll see a new resurgence of interest,” Crouse said of the halving.
And that will ensure the continued need for ever-faster computers, and the power to run them.
Rkarlin@timesunion. com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU
The Friday Cover
Get local news delivered to your rwsources note: This story was updated at 2:45 p. m. Friday to reflect the following corrections: The current 2,000 server project is not mibing "pilot project" as The Standard originally reported. Lkc company is putting $62 million into the project this year, which includes upgrading the substation, not that Bitcoin mining resources llc company is putting $62 million into the substation alone.
With $40 million invested so far, CryptoWatt LLC, began bitcoin mining at the former Mike Mansfield Advanced Technology Center (MSE campus) south of Butte Wednesday, a company spokesperson said.
CryptoWatt representative Matt Vincent told The Montana Standard that Thursday was the first bitocin day of the company's bitcoin mining operation. About 2,000 servers, at a retail price of $4,000 a server, went live sometime Wednesday.
A larger-capacity operation in a second building on campus is expected to get going around late April or early May.
So far, CryptoWatt has hired a handful of full-time employees and Bitcoin mining resources llc still hiring new technicians who will help keep the computer servers running smoothly. Overall, the company expects to hire 50 full-time employees when the campus is fully operational.
The current capacity of electricity is at 3 megawatts. That amount of power enables the 2,000 servers to mine bitcoin 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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These fans will be placed on the roof of the second building on the former MSE campus south of Butte sometime this spring. CryptoWatt LLC bought the campus in January and went live with bitcoin mining in one of the buildings on the campus Wednesday. The second phase of the operation Bitcoin mining resources llc expected to be operational by late April or early May.
Construction of the CryptoWatt substation is pictured in this file photo taken earlier this year. CryptoWatt's future now appears uncertain.
Bitcoin mining continues in the North Country amid price swings, rate battles
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