Just in: The moral basis for the NY Bitcoin Mining ban was a fraud
tl;dr: No Bitcoin mining operation has ever revived a fossil fuel plant.
Here's the context, the story and the evidence below
Rule #1 psy-ops: "Find a scapegoat and create moral outrage around it"
Rule #2 "If you cannot find a scapegoat, invent one"
Rule#2 is what the advocates of the NY Bitcoin mining ban used
The scapegoat was of course Greenidge Energy. You know, that Bitcoin mining company that was responsible for bringing a disused fossil fuel plant back online to mine Bitcoin?
Except that the story was sexed up. There were no WMDs. Greenidge did not bring back a gasplant for the purpose of mining Bitcoin. They brought it back for the purpose of selling that power to the grid.
Recently I did a bit of investigation into Greenidge, since (no one in NY Times seemed to be), and here's what I found, with the evidence in the filings below.
1. Greenidge bought the then inactive power facility and spent tens of millions of dollars to permanently end the ability to use the plant for coal fired operations before converting the facility to natural gas operations.
2. Greenidge brought the now natural gas facility to the wholesale energy market in 2017 as a merchant power provider, under newly issued air and water permits. There was no Bitcoin just a natural gas power plant when Greenidge restarted operations.
3. Two years later, in 2019, Greenidge began a small Bitcoin mining pilot of approximately 1 megawatt (“MW”) while continuing to send power to the local energy grid as well.
4. The Bitcoin operation began to expand in 2021, eventually reaching the level it is at now, but throughout the entire time and to this day, the Greenidge power plant provides power to the local electrical grid every minute it operates, which is mandated by its agreement with the local grid operator. In fact, in 2022 Greendige sent more energy to the local grid than it did when it was just a power plant only, without Bitcoin mining operations.
Conclusion: Greenidge came online to supply additional power to the grid, not to mine Bitcoin. 2 years, later it opened a small Bitcoin mining operation that grew in size over the next 2 years.
What this means is that the claim of critics "Bitcoin mining revives old fossil fuel plants" is false. There have been no fossil fuel plant brought back online for the purpose of mining Bitcoin. This is yet another piece of misinformation used by Bitcoin critics, which is unsupported by data.
You can see this evolution in the S-1 form with the SEC, below, which provides a detailed look on when and how the operation grew.
Additionally, you can see Greenidge's initial press release announcing its exploration into bitcoin mining dated March 5, 2020 here
Greenidge Generation Holdings Inc.
Greenidge Generation Announces Successful Start of Operations at ‘State of the Art’ Data Center for Digital Currencies - Greenidge Generation Holdings Inc.
DRESDEN, NY, March 5, 2020 Greenidge Generation LLC announced today that it has successfully added a unique, “one of a kind” data cente...
