Stephen Alpher
Stephen Alpher is CoinDesk's co-regional news chief, Americas. He holds BTC and ETH above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.
The Environmental Conservation Committee of the New York State Assembly voted on Tuesday afternoon to move along a proposed law that would ban so-called proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrency mining for two years.
- The bill was put together under the auspices of the state's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which mandates that New York's greenhouse gas emissions be cut by 85% by 2050, with net emissions being slashed to zero.
- It would effectively ban PoW mining – the energy-intensive process used to secure the Bitcoin (BTC) network – for a period of two years.
- The legislation still requires passage by the entire New York State Assembly and the state's Senate, and then would need to be signed into law by the governor.
- Earlier this month, a similar PoW ban narrowly failed to pass in an EU Parliament committee vote.
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Read more: After Short-Lived Ban, City in Upstate NY Is Still Reckoning With Crypto Miners