A bill that has been passed in New York State will impose new limitations on the operations of local miners of Bitcoin BTC/USD and other cryptocurrencies.
What Happened: The New York Senate Bill 6486 was proposed by a Democrat senator and Chairman of Committee on Energy and Telecommunications, Kevin S. Parker, in early May.
On Tuesday, the bill was passed in Senate moving forward to becoming a new rule that the state's citizens will have to abide by.
In its original form, the bill would have forced all the local cryptocurrency mining operations to stop for three years to allow local authorities to do an environmental impact assessment.
It was later amended to prevent new operations from receiving permits to operate in an "electric generating facility that utilizes a carbon-based fuel" and limit the electrical consumption of existing mining operations at their current levels forbidding their expansion. Furthermore, the bill also mandates the creation of a "generic environmental impact statement" on Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining.
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New York legislators are concerned that Bitcoin and crypto mining is hurting the progress made in phasing out fossil fuel-powered power plans. The bill reads:"Many fossil fuel power plants have been shut down across the state in recent years due to reduced energy demand, improved transmission capacity and non-economic carbon-based fuel sources. [...] The previous intermittent usage, and can cause significant negative impacts to air quality especially in environmental justice communities."
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