Cryptocurrency notoriously devours electricity; each Bitcoin transaction consumes 1,173 kilowatts.

Plattsburgh had some of the least expensive power anywhere in the United States, thanks to cheap hydroelectricity from the Niagara Power Authority.

Plattsburgh was soon receiving a major mining application every week.

In January 2018, there was a cold snap. People turned up their heat and plugged in space heaters. The city quickly exceeded its quota of hydropower, forcing it to buy power elsewhere at much higher rates. McMahon says his Plattsburgh home’s energy bill jumped by $30 to $40 a month. “People felt there was a problem but didn’t know what to attribute it to,” he says.

Carla Brancato lives across the river from Zafra, a crypto-mining and hosting company owned by Plattsburgh resident Ryan Brienza. She says that for several years her condo vibrated from its noise, as if someone were constantly running a vacuum upstairs.

Plattsburgh updated its building codes and noise ordinances.

Zafra’s new facility, he says, has made noise reduction a priority; Brancato says after the city worked with Zafra to turn down its fans last summer, her home is finally quiet.

Now Plattsburgh is again accepting new crypto-mine applications. Yet with the new regulations in place, they’ve seen little interest. Instead, mining has surged in the nearby town of Massena.

As long as mining is so profitable, Read warns, crypto bans just shift the harm to new locations. When China banned crypto mining in 2021 to achieve its carbon reduction goals, operations surged in places like Kazakhstan, where electricity comes primarily from coal.

Read dismisses the promises that green investments or greater efficiencies can solve this problem. In a recent working paper, he found that cryptocurrency’s energy usage will rise another 30% by the end of the decade