on June 30 when New York officials denied the air permits of Greenidge Generation, a Bitcoin mining operation, citing “substantial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the project.” The decision could set a precedent for how local jurisdictions across the country approach a hotly contested topic.Īt the moment, the rate at which crypto miners use renewable energy sources is heavily disputed. In the long run, they say, crypto will revolutionize the energy grid, and soak up excess energy that would have been otherwise wasted.Īs lobbyists have volleyed arguments on both sides, a blow was dealt to crypto mining’s hopes for rapid expansion in the U.S. They say that it offers a new, energy-hungry market that will encourage renewable projects.
On the other side, members of the crypto community argue that crypto mining is actually good for the environment in several crucial ways. Studies estimate that Bitcoin mining, the process that safeguards the Bitcoin network, uses more power globally per year than most countries, including the Philippines and Venezuela. Pro-crypto posts on social media are often flooded with angry comments about the industry’s outsized contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. mine for bitcoin or any other kind of cryptocurrency.Cryptocurrencies are bad for the environment-at least, that’s what most people online seem to believe. I felt like it was going to catch fire.”Ī uTorrent spokesman said that neither uTorrent nor BitTorrent Inc. “When I arrived home this evening my PC, was running at full tilt and practically blowing steam. “Got this installed when upgraded uTorrent,” wrote another. “There was no notification it just installed.” “This is pure bloatware, just updated my uTorrent,” one user complained to TorrentFreak. Our policy is that these offers are strictly optional, and we have never done a silent install in fact we built our installer technology to make silent installs impossible.”īut the charge is that uTorrent quietly included Epic Scale in a dense update agreement that users quickly clicked through, blindly agreeing to the terms and conditions. “Many of you already understand that this is a common model for software companies that provide products and technology for free.
“As we've discussed in the past, partner offers are one of the ways we generate revenue,” the post said, referring to BitTorrent Inc.'s partnership with Epic Scale. A company moderator on uTorrent's forums said Sunday that after weeks of criticism, uTorrent has “paused the offer to allow time for us to do an evaluation.” Updates downloaded between January and March 6 of this year have included Epic Scale, a bitcoin-mining program that slows all operations on normally-fast computers. Over 150 million users rely on uTorrent to download large torrent files, everything from academic papers to pirated movies and music. The software, known as Epic Scale, hijacks a user's computing and memory power in order for the company of the same name to generate computing power to mine for bitcoin. The hugely popular download service uTorrent is still taking heat after announcing it would no longer freight downloads with software that slows the user's computer for the parent company's bitcoin-mining purposes - a practice most users weren't aware of and hadn't agreed to.