EarthCast.org podcasts focus on environmental issues, solutions, and human resilience.

These podcasts are produced in conjunction with the AP Environmental science class at Beekmantown High School and DanvilleScience.org

Interviewing people about known controversial issues can be difficult.

In the case of Bitcoin operations, the whole industry is so complicated that most people have taken a wait-and-see attitude.

However, when PayPal, Expedia, Microsoft, and even Starbucks are accepting bitcoin, it's time that the general public learn more about this blockchain phenomena.

So we're going to talk about what bitcoin is and how it’s become controversial, how it's become a vehicle for investors and what role it will play in banking in the future.

The technology known as blockchain is what’s behind bitcoin

Blockchain is said to be the future of everything from a new currency like Bitcoin to medical recordkeeping, voting, copyrighting, and even tax regulation and compliance.

An important element about the computing power necessary for Bitcoin mining that we will look at from an environmental aspect, is the extraordinary amount of energy used in the mining process and how that has led to some issues for Bitcoin mining.

Bitcoin has the largest operations, or BitCoin mines in the countries of Mongolia, Georgia, Iceland, in the states of Washington and Virginia in the US, and in Vancouver, Canada.

The first city to ban bitcoin operations in the United States is Plattsburgh New York, where bitcoin hosting and its huge draw of electricity used in mining has upset the balance of cheap electricity that the New York Power Authority has allotted for Plattsburgh

Plattsburgh receives 104.5 megawatts of the 2,525 megawatts produced at any given time by the Niagara Power Plant at a rate of 2.5 to 4 cents per kilowatt hour; a rock-bottom rate for electricity that has not changed since the 1950s.  

Because of the threat of exceeding the 104.5 megawatts of electricity used by residents and the new bitcoin mining operations, the city of Plattsburgh banned bitcoin operations until just last week.

The city lifted the ban reaching a deal that would have the bitcoin hosting companies pay a higher rate once the limit was reached effectively reserving the ultra cheap power for the residents of the city.

This has created a new industry in the city and the solution seems to be to have the bitcoin hosting companies back on track and poised to make Plattsburgh a new center for blockchain hosting.  

What’s more is that the city is working with some of the hosting companies to utilize the heat generated from the bitcoin operations in the cold northern New York state winter months to heat city businesses and buildings.

Zoe Danville hosts this Earthcast.org podcast.

Ryan Brienza, runs a Bitcoin hosting operation in Plattsburgh, New York called ZafraHosting, and his company is now looking at new possibilities for growth now that the moratorium on bitcoin mining has been lifted.