Cryptocurrency mining—particularly Bitcoin—has grown rapidly in the U.S. due to China’s ban on the industry. Georgia, currently a major mining hub, has witnessed a surge of mining facilities that consume vast amounts of electricity, contribute to carbon emissions, and place strain on water resources. Crypto operations offer limited local benefits while exposing residents to noise pollution, grid instability, and rising utility rates. The campaign aims to regulate crypto mining effectively, promoting sustainable practices and protecting public health and resources.
Click here for an in-depth breakdown of Crypto and Blockchain technology
Fast Facts
– High Energy Demand: A single Bitcoin transaction uses 715 kWh of energy, enough to power a household for 24 days. The new Plant Vogtle reactor can power 1.2million homes or 6 crypto mines.
– Water Consumption: Facilities use millions of gallons annually, matching the annual water use of cities like Washington, D.C..
– Limited Job Creation: Crypto mines employ only 10-30 people per site, with minimal impact on local economies.
– Noise Pollution: Crypto machines produce noise comparable to jet engines, disturbing nearby communities and affecting mental health.
HB 1192 – Georgia General Assembly
– Objective: Suspend tax breaks for data centers and empower local governments to regulate crypto mining through public votes.
– Impact: Prevent unchecked growth of mining facilities and ensure local input in permitting processes
– Result: Passed by both houses of the Georgia General Assembly in 2024. Vetoed by Gov. Kemp.
Markey’s Crypto-Asset Environmental Transparency Act
– Objective: Require crypto mining facilities to disclose environmental impacts.
– Impact: Encourage sustainable mining practices and highlight the benefits of transitioning to Proof of Stake (PoS), which uses 99.95% less energy than Proof of Work (PoW) protocols.
Gilmer County Ordinance
– This ordinance aimed to control crypto mining operations, but poor enforcement led to continued community disruption due to noise and resource use.
Proposed Ordinance Recommendations:
– Noise Measurement: Use dBC readings to capture low-frequency noise, not dBA.
– Location Restrictions: Limit proximity to schools, parks, nursing homes, and residential areas.
– Water and Cooling Requirements: Use gray water or recycled water for cooling to minimize freshwater consumption.
– Environmental Controls: Mandate stormwater management and land grading to prevent local flooding.
– Energy requirements: require the use of green energy sources.
– Transparency on water and power usage: a lot of these centers hide their consumption rates behind “trade secrets” – so that communities do not know the real cost.
– Charge conservation rates for water and power usage.
– Charge a tariff on consumption: mines require new energy generation facilities. Ensure that they pay a tariff to pay for the construction of new facilities.
– Southern Georgia Regional Commission Model Ordinance for Cryptocurrency and Data Mining
Algorithmic and technological improvements are constantly occurring. It is important technology companies know that they will need to conserve compute resources, so that they are encouraged to innovate and not ‘lock in’ to a specific technology or algorithm.
New techniques such as model pruning, knowledge distillation, memory management, and mixed-precision training, as well as, hardware advances, can and do provide performance while minimizing energy use.
Bitcoin is running on first generation blockchain technology (termed ‘proof of work’) which is highly energy consumptive. New generations of blockchain technology utilize ‘proof of stake’ which use much less energy.
FAQs
- A secure method for validating a transaction using a “token” without the need to exchange sensitive information (such as a credit card number or SSN)
- A series of “blocks” are created where each is dependent on the last – using math that makes it impossible to create a fraudulent block
- But it can be used to facilitate any sort of banking, electronic transaction, equipment rentals, etc.
- All cryptocurrencies are on blockchains, but not all blockchains are for crypto currencies.
- Legalese
- ‘Blockchain’ means data that are shared across a network to create a ledger of verified transactions or information among network participants linked using cryptography to maintain the integrity of the ledger and to execute other functions and distributed among network participants in an automated fashion to concurrently update network participants on the state of the ledger and any other functions.
- ‘Blockchain protocol’ means any executable software deployed to a blockchain composed of source code that is publicly available and accessible, including a smart contract or any network of smart contracts.
Like any technology, blockchain has changed over the years. Each new “jump” in technological capabilities is termed a “generation”
– Blockchain Generations:
- First Generation – Focused on cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.
- Second Generation – Introduced programmable blockchains (e.g., Ethereum).
- Third Generation – Scalable for millions of users with better performance.
– Tokens can represent anything (services, products) and allow peer-to-peer transactions without the need for intermediaries (e.g., banks).
– This model promotes trust and allows for secure, tamper-proof transactions through hashing.
Validation methods
- Old school – proof of work – new blocks on the chain are created and validated by solving complex algorithmic puzzles. Miners compete to create new blocks and the fastest one wins. Winning gets you paid. In the case of Bitcoin – you are paid in Bitcoin.
- New school – proof of stake – people become part of a pool of validators by “buying into” it (like a poker “ante”) – new blocks on the chain are created and validated by a randomly selected validator.
– Decentralization of a network means that anyone, anywhere, can contribute to the blockchain.
– Performance is a measure of how quickly a calculation can be done.
– Fully decentralized networks (e.g., Bitcoin) are slower, more energy consumptive, but are ‘unhackable’ and thus can be universally accessible.
– Centralized blockchains like Solana have higher transaction speeds and less energy use, but limit accessibility due to lessened security.
– Blockchains developed by different companies (e.g., Walmart, JPMorgan) are often centralized, but this creates challenges in integrating data.
– A compromise between energy, security, performance, and centralization would be to have decentralized, local, networks operating quickly and energy efficiently. And then performing interoperability checks via something akin to Bitcoin.
- A currency that relies on blockchain technology and exists outside of traditional governmental authority / regulation / backing
- Dollar is backed by the US Government. Bitcoin is backed math.
- Georgia Code § 7-1-680 (2023) – Definitions :: 2023 Georgia Code :: US Codes and Statutes :: US Law :: Justia
- (30) “Virtual currency” means a digital representation of monetary value that does not have legal tender status as recognized by the United States government. Such term shall not include the software or protocols governing the transfer of the digital representation of monetary value; units of value that are issued in an affinity or rewards program and that cannot be redeemed for money or virtual currencies; or an affinity or rewards program tied to a credit, debit, or prepaid card that awards points for purchases or other transactions, which points can be redeemed for dollar denominated credit to a checking, credit card, or prepaid account, or for a gift card, goods, travel, or services.
- A large computing center where Bitcoins are mined by performing the Proof of Work validations.
- legalese
- ‘Virtual currency mining’ means the use of electricity to power a computer for the purpose of securing a blockchain protocol.
- ‘Virtual currency mining business’ means a business that uses a group of computers working at a single site that consume more than 1 megawatt of energy for the purpose of generating virtual currency by securing a blockchain protocol.
Pros: libertarian currency free from government interference and oversight.
Cons: energy intensive, water intensive, obtrusive noise due to cooling fans. Ponzi scheme style of wealth accumulation.
- A large computing center that enables cloud storage and cloud computing. Offsite backups, online applications (Microsoft Teams applications, Google Docs/Sheets, Quickbooks, Fortnite, Chat GPT), and token transactions that are not based on crypto mining.
- Georgia Code § 48-8-3 (2023) – [Effective Until 1/1/2025] Exemptions :: 2023 Georgia Code :: US Codes and Statutes :: US Law :: Justia
- (ii)“High-technology data center” means a facility, campus of facilities, or array of interconnected facilities in this state that is developed to power, cool, secure, and connect its own equipment or the computer equipment of high-technology data center customers and that has an investment budget plan which meets the high-technology data center minimum investment threshold.
Pros: Distributed computing. Offsite storage protects from individual data loss. Innovative new companies have reduced start-up capital costs.
Cons: energy intensive, water intensive, deep fake videos.
- Storage is a series of hard disk drives that hold your digital information.
- Compute is the CPU, where the computer does work such as modeling, Excel calculations, editing a photo, making a video.
- Storage is relatively cheap and not energy taxing.
- Computing is expensive and energy intensive.
- Chat GPT is part of an evolution in modeling – from training models to do specific tasks – to training models that are generic and then asking them to do anything. These new models are called foundational models. The ‘generic’ nature of these models means that you can just a question and get an answer.
- For example, say you wanted to use a picture of flooding to measure the depth of the water
- Before – you would have to train a model to pick out the people, and tell it how to use the people to estimate water depth. The model would have to be retrained if you wanted to use cars, or trees, or signposts, or anything else to estimate flood depth.
- Now – when you can just ask the foundational model – tell me the water height – and it can utilize the person, or tree, or signposts without needing three different training mechanisms.
YES!
Computer algorithms and hardware are always adapting and evolving.
20 years ago, most code did not account for cyber security (because being online was new and no one thought of security before we were all connected), and now it does.
A similar paradigm shift can occur where developers should program with compute efficiency in mind.
Computer hardware and chip design will also evolve to handle common computations in an efficient manner.
As with anything, the default is the quickest and cheapest way to do things. Right now, compute cycles are inexpensive, so there is no pressure to innovate more efficient methodologies.