The Exchanges

Q So you get there, who do you talk to, and what is the reaction to this operation, and what does it say about how people in the community are thinking about this?

A So there are a number of people that are in opposition to this Bitcoin mine. It's not just, you know, one or two people doing one or two things that live right in the shadow of this power plant. It's people across the lake. The people I was able to speak with include the founder of Seneca Lake Guardian, this woman, Yvonne Taylor, who was just, you know, she called herself an accidental activist. And I love that because if you think climate activists, you probably have certain, you know, ideas in mind. And she was the opposite of a lot of that. Um, she's just, you know, a speech therapist working with at-risk youth. Someone that wasn't, you know, like a rah-rah climate person. Um, she was just somebody that loved this place. Her family had lived there for seven generations. It meant so much to her. And all these folks said the same thing. Like, it's not that they're opposed to cryptocurrency. They're not opposed to thinking about the future. Is that whatever that may mean, what they want is they want this place to stay special, um, and to be protected from the damage done when it comes to cryptocurrency mining that's associated with Bitcoin. And so, you know, the issue for them is, like, what do they want their future to be? Do they want to live in the shadow of this Bitcoin mine, cranking out carbon pollution, twenty-four-seven, making noise pollution, expanding operations, or …

AI assessment note: “The people I was able to speak with include the founder of Seneca Lake Guardian”

Q A lot of people would be asking, Why not make that change? If, if it's a 99% difference in energy use, why would we not make that change right away?

A I mean, that's a great question. I think the answer is that there are just really entrenched interests who are already making a lot of money off the system that exists. And so to convince them to make that change, um, or to convince enough of them to make the change is, is a tall ask. There's a lot of entropy that works in favor of proof of work with Bitcoin. If you look at Greenwich, for example, Last year, that mine made eighty-eight million dollars, and if you're gonna say, hey, guess what, like, we wanna take away that eighty-million-dollar cash cow, that's a really tough sell to them. Again, like I said, like, we should probably do that anyways because, you know, there's no money or economy on a dead planet, but that is the, that is the reason.

AI assessment note: “there are just really entrenched interests who are already making a lot of money”

Q So we're sitting here talking on a Google Meet call. There's a carbon cost to streaming a video over a data center. Everything that we do online has a carbon cost in some way. Why crypto? What, what is different about what's happening in that world?

A You know, when it comes to these big tech companies, like Google, for example, like they want to get to net zero. They want to get to a hundred percent renewables. That is like a centralized decision that Google is making for crypto and for cryptocurrency mining in particular, no one's making centralized decisions necessarily. Um, instead it's this decentralized decision-making process where everyone is actually like, okay, like what's the cheapest way to get the most cash out of this, to generate the most Bitcoins possible. And to do that requires, um, I mean, in a lot of cases, fossil fuel energy, and so that, I think, is what's really interesting, is that there's no one saying, like, crypto's got to be a hundred percent green, or it's got to be a hundred percent dirty. There's just a bunch of people making decisions right now, and a lot of them lead to extremely high energy use and sort of rising emissions as well.

AI assessment note: “for crypto and for cryptocurrency mining in particular, no one's making centralized decisions”

Q So how did you end up this winter in the middle of New York in the Finger Lakes?

A Thought it'd be a cool place to take a vacation. Everyone loves the Finger Lakes upstate New York in winter, right? Um, no, I've honestly, so I've been looking at this Bitcoin mine that started growing there for I guess a little over a year. But it allowed me to watch what was going on over that time period and to see it, you know, expanding and growing and becoming this much bigger, you know, operation than it was initially. And so by the time I was able to get up there this winter, you know, we saw, what we saw was essentially this power plant that was generating some power and also crypto mining on the side become essentially a full-fledged crypto mine for the majority of its time using massive amounts of power to mine for Bitcoin. And so it was like, This moment where there was a really strong inflection point, where this mine had grown to a huge scale, and there was a big decision coming down on whether it would be able to continue operating.

AI assessment note: “so I've been looking at this Bitcoin mine that started growing there”

Q This is The Carbon Copy. I'm Stephen Lacey. The companies that own dying dirty power plants see a chance to extend their lives. All thanks to cryptocurrency. This week, how Bitcoin mining is locking in fossil fuels, and what could change it. When does the world of crypto come into your climate reporting for the first time? When did you start paying attention to, to Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency world?

A That's good. I wonder, I should go back and look and see in the archives. I mean, I think it started, you know, a couple of years ago when people started looking at, like, what was going on in, you know, in China specifically. That's where a lot of crypto mining was happening at the time. And so I guess, what, maybe 2018, 2019 is when it sort of got on my radar as a thing to sort of watch, given the emissions. And it's been wild to watch them just curve up and up and up. The more interest there has been in crypto, probably because people Maybe, like, me, her writing about it. People are like, oh, I want to know more about that. Oh, I can make money. Um, whatever it might be. So that's when it really, that's when it started. Right, you've heard these terms by now. Bitcoin, mining, the blockchain, Dogecoin. Cryptocurrency is having a notable impact on the world's financial markets, but it's also affecting the environment.

AI assessment note: “maybe 2018, 2019 is when it sort of got on my radar”

Q You use this term, zombie power plants. What do you mean by that?

A I mean, there are just a lot of undead power plants in upstate New York. There are plants that are either nearing the end of their operational life because it's just not efficient to operate them, or there are plants that have already been shuttered because, again, the economics are just, have turned against coal, or they just, we don't need that power on the grid. Those plants, though, are up for sale. Anything's for sale. Um, it was wild. I didn't know you could buy a power plant, but apparently you can if you have enough money. Um, so if, uh, you know, it's, I don't know. I don't think I'm ever going to be there, but maybe someday. But that's the thing is, like, these plants are all up for sale, and you can do anything with them. I mean, you can generate power, and that's what they're doing in Greenwich, but there's also this, like, possibility where you can take it and essentially bring it back to life. Say, hey, we're generating a little bit of power at, You know, X power plant, but then do whatever you want with it instead, um, on your own time. It's kind of like a, oh, I got, you know, hobby time. Um, and for them, this hobby is mining Bitcoin. Um, so it's something that, you know, when you look at the power plant itself and look at, you know, the money, if you kind of follow the money, right, you can see where are they making money. And the majority of the money they're…

AI assessment note: “plants that have already been shuttered... essentially bring it back to life”