July 9, 2021 2 min read

Residents of one of the Finger Lakes in New York claim that a bitcoin mining operation is heating up the body of water so much that it feels “like you’re in a hot tub,” reports NBC News .

The note asserts that a gas power plant is used to power some 8,000 computers. This computer network uses water from Seneca Lake to cool itself and then discharges the heated water back into the lake.

“The lake is so hot it feels like you’re in a hot tub,” said Abi Buddington, whose home is near the plant.

Bitcoin mining, which is used to create new cryptocurrencies of this type, is an increasingly controversial process because it is done with computers that do complex calculations and release a lot of energy in the form of heat, which damages the environment.

^{Global cryptocurrency miners use more energy in a year than Chile / Image: Depositphotos.com}

According to documents seen by NBC News , the power plant can suck 139 million gallons of water and discharge 135 million gallons a day.

The operation on the shores of Seneca Lake is operated by Greenidge Generation. Their computers run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, burning a staggering amount of real energy and producing real pollution, as they collect virtual currency.

To give us an idea of the growing problem posed by bitcoin mining, an estimate from the University of Cambridge indicates that global cryptocurrency miners use more energy in a year than Chile.