Daylighting Cryptocurrency’s Waterstreams

Cryptocurrency mining's reliance on water and energy ties the digital promise of abundance to material scarcity, a tension illustrated by Bathhouse in Brooklyn and Greenidge Generation on New York's Seneca Lake. Bathhouse heats its pools with two ASICs, with its Williamsburg location running twelve miners at a hashrate of twelve hundred terrahash. Greenidge, located in a former coal plant, draws nearly 140 million gallons of lake water daily and discharges it usually nine to thirteen degrees warmer, which activists argue will accelerate harmful algal blooms.