"Cryptocurrency miners are flocking to New York’s faded industrial towns, prompting concern over the environmental impact of huge computer farms."

"A bitcoin mining operation is opening northeast of Niagara Falls this month on the site of the last working coal plant in New York State.

Across the state, a former aluminum plant in Massena, already one of the biggest cryptocurrency sites in the United States, is expanding.

And in Owego, a metal-recycling mogul with 11.3 million Instagram followers is making a gritty start-up with banks of computers in shipping containers next to a scrapyard.

Soaring Bitcoin values may be the investment talk of Wall Street, but a few hours north, in upstate New York, the buzz is about companies that are scrambling to create the digital currency by “mining” it virtually with all types and sizes of computer farms constantly whizzing through transactions."

Corey Kilgannon reports for the New York Times December 5, 2021. [2]