
Plattsburgh, New York has imposed an 18-month moratorium on Bitcoin mining - artsandsci
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8xk4qv/bitcoin-ban-plattsburgh-coinmint-mining
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freehunter
After reading the article, I'm going to have to agree with the city. I would
strongly encourage anyone who disagrees to read the article as well. They're
not banning bitcoin mining, they're exempting commercial bitcoin miners from a
cut-rate electricity deal designed to draw in industrial operations like
factories.

Basically the city gives extremely cheap power to factories and other
industrial enterprises in exchange for them hiring employees and generating
revenue for the city. This was written overly broad, miners moved in and took
advantage of it, and now the city is realizing their mistake and temporarily
changing the wording of the law while they determine how to fix it long-term.
Existing operations are not impacted, just new ones.

I think the disagreement here is the headline is just super shitty. They
didn't ban bitcoin mining, they stopped subsidizing extremely cheap
electricity for commercial bitcoin mining operations. Big difference.

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philipodonnell
Can we get a headline update on this?

Its not a ban, its not the first time a city has temporarily refused to issue
new cryptocurrency mining permits, its not on Bitcoin specifically and the
city is Plattsburg, NY. Every word in this headline is misleading or wrong
except the word 'passed'.

Better headline is right from the same article: 'Plattsburgh, New York has
imposed an 18-month moratorium on Bitcoin mining to prevent miners from using
all the city’s cheap electricity.'

The city couldn't supply enough electricity at a certain type of discounted
rate so they will refuse any new permits for any cryptocurrency mining
operations until they find an approach that works without driving electricity
prices up during periods of high demand. There have been temporarily
restricted new permits in the NW for some time now as new substations were
being brought online.

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dang
Let's try the subtitle instead.

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philipodonnell
Thanks!

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brettatoms
I wish we could avoid the click-baity titles and replace "This City" with
"Plattsburgh, New York"

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unethical_ban
>Plattsburgh, New York Just Took Eliminated Cut-Rate Electrity Rates For
Commercial Cyryptocurrency Miners

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dwighttk
for New commercial cryptocurrency miners

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bobthepanda
How many people does a commercial crypto mining operation even employ? Sounds
like a lot of negatives for the locals without a lot of upside.

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sp332
The city is Plattsburg, NY. It's an 18-month moratorium on new commercial
miners.

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yason
I can understand the case but this is just littered with perverse governance
all over.

I didn't know there would be places where you could be assumed to request a
mining permit? What's it to anyone else what you're doing with your computers?
And why would you even tell anyone?

I wonder if the mining permit applies even if you have your own solar farm to
run your machines? If not, then why call it a mining permit and not
"permission to buy huge amounts of electricity"?

But also electricity should be neutral just as internet should be net-neutral.
It should be so that you buy electricity and then do whatever you want with
it. If this causes problems it's more than fair for the city or the power
company to charge progressively as a function of usage until it doesn't make
any economic sense to buy more. If each 10kWh costs more than the previous
10kWh it will set some natural limits and if someone still wants that
electricity badly they would be paying enough so that the power company can
buy that expensive power from other networks.

It seems to me that a lot of problems were solved backwards there.

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rory096
Recent coverage of bitcoin mining in Plattsburgh:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/business/economy/bitcoin-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/business/economy/bitcoin-
electricity-productivity.html)

Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16498776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16498776)

Gives you a sense of what the mayor was thinking in the weeks leading up to
this. (And makes you wonder if the NY Times reporter's prodding is what got
them around to actually banning it.)

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ct0
Would it be okay to train extensive neural nets?

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douglasfshearer
If it's just Bitcoin named in the bylaw, what's to stop the mining enterprises
from switching to mining another cryptocurrency?

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paulcole
[https://www.cityofplattsburgh-
ny.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=22...](https://www.cityofplattsburgh-
ny.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=229)

The law itself says, “cryptocurrency”:

>A LOCAL LAW IMPOSING A MORATORIUM ON COMMERCIAL CRYPTOCURRENCY MINING
OPERATIONS IN THE CITY OF PLATTSBURGH

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douglasfshearer
Thanks.

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bonoetmalo
How are they going to go about enforcing something like this?

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bentruyman
Read the article.

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coding123
So the truth is that people are using electric heaters instead of gas/oil
based heating systems, and they are somehow blaming it on bitcoin mining?

Also shouldn't the law be written to specify any electricity usage over a
certain wattage? I don't know anything about Plattsburg, NY but why would a
local factory that uses 100 megawatts be more "allowed" to use electricity
than a bitcoin miner?

What if the bitcoin miner (or any high-wattage business) sets up their own 1
MW solar array?

If the city has power deals that is bad for itself, why punish its residents
with a law like this?

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sirclueless
It sounds like a bandaid to paper over a poorly-conceived program of
incentives while they work out something more permanent. They were using their
power plant as a loss-leader to attract industry. Which explains why the local
factory is "more allowed;" it's presumably because they expect the factory to
generate more jobs and tax revenue than the bitcoin miner.

