Massena Town Board schedules public hearing to extend cryptocurrency moratorium | Business

“As you remember that has been, you might say, extended a few times. They are still working on regulations. So the hearing next week will be to extend it again or not and for how long,” Town Supervisor Susan J. Bellor said during a special meeting on Wednesday.

Town officials first started discussing a potential moratorium in July 2018 because town regulations did not address cryptocurrency mining operations, and they needed time to get regulations in place. Sea boxes and trailers were among the concerns when the board passed its first moratorium on any future operations.

North Country Data Center, a subsidiary of the cryptocurrency mining company Coinmint, set up its operation at the former Alcoa East plant, though the town’s code did not address data centers and technology parks. Even though nothing in the code addressed cryptocurrency operations, the Massena Planning Board approved the site plan and special-use permit for the operation because it fell within guidelines that were part of the code.

The town board held another public hearing earlier this year to extend its moratorium, which was set to expire on April 30.

Town attorney Eric J. Gustafson said during that meeting that he had heard rumors that the state would propose a moratorium, but there were no guarantees. He said the town wasn’t yet ready to finalize a local law that would regulate the operations.

The board had extended the moratorium on cryptocurrency mining operations until April 30 after several people spoke out against them during a recent public hearing. The previous moratorium was set to expire Feb. 28.

That meeting drew a full house that filled the board room, with speakers sharing concerns about issues such as noise, aesthetics and the impact on the environment.

Meanwhile, village trustees joined with their town counterparts earlier this year and also established a six-month moratorium on future cryptocurrency mining operations in the village.

According to the village resolution, the board believes that “such a moratorium will protect the public interest and welfare of the residents of the village until such comprehensive regulations are adopted.”

The village defines cryptocurrency mining as “the commercial process by which cryptocurrency transactions are verified and added to the public ledger, known as the block chain, and also the means through which new units of cryptocurrencies are released, through the use of server farms employing data processing equipment.”

The resolution defines server farms as “three or more interconnected computers housed together in a single facility whose primary function is to perform cryptocurrency mining or associated data processing.”