Crypto foes gird to stop mines from ‘spreading like cancer’

Beijing Bitmain's and Allrise Capital's bitcoin mining facility in Usk has been in the national news several times in the last couple of weeks-- and not in a good way. Today, Politico reporter Niina Farah writes about how people opposed to the negative environmental, social, and economic consequences of industrial-scale bitcoin mining are banding together. 

Ms. Farah wrote: 

​In the wake of a national surge in crypto mining, local activists are searching for ways to fight the energy-intensive industry’s rapid growth — and calling on Congress for backup.
Crypto mines — banks of computers that run to obtain digital currency — can operate as much as 24 hours per day, seven days a week and, depending on their energy source, can spew significant levels of planet-warming gases.
After China cracked down on crypto mining within its borders a year and a half ago, the industry has become a growing presence in communities with cheap electricity from hydropower — and also from more carbon-intensive sources like natural gas and coal.

“These miners are moving to the United States and spreading like cancer across the country,” said Yvonne Taylor, one of the founders of the National Coalition Against Cryptomining, a new advocacy group uniting activists from Georgia to Washington state.
She added: “We had to do something on a national level.”
In 2020, before China’s crackdown on crypto mining, the United States accounted for just 3.5 percent of global mining of bitcoin, the leading type of cryptocurrency.
By 2022, that figure had jumped to 38 percent, and the United States is now home to a third of global crypto mining assets, according to a report from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).
The crypto boom has led to a tripling of energy usage since 2021 — matching the amount of power needed to turn on the lights in every home in the United States.

Read her full article, including several paragraphs about the facility in Pend Oreille County here: Crypto foes gird to stop mines from 'spreading like cancer' - E&E News (eenews.net)