New York Bitcoin Miners Are Buying Up Power Plants—and Communities Are Fighting Back

Bitcoin is still a thing then?

One of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions are disused or decommissioned natural gas wells, which continue to leach methane into the atmosphere after being abandoned. Crypto mining has the potential to incentivize the decimation of these greenhouse outputs by using that methane to generate their power, outputting water and the much less harmful carbon dioxide as combustion product instead. But as mining is a profitability game, they won't do that if there are cheaper and readily-available power sources to tap into. That's why it's crucially important for regulators to get smart about this: setting up rules that prohibit crypto mining on public power sources, identifying sites in need of pollution management, possibly incentivizing miners willing work within a framework where they can capture and utilize that pollution and show their work.