Interesting take, the one i heard was that miners were abusing small town areas that had hydroelectric power.

The power generation is customer owned, so the savings are passed onto the consumer. The Miners set up shop, but unlike say a aluminium smelter, bitcoin miners don't bring jobs. They just use up the infrastructure. All the locals see are rising rates, and the only thing being generated is speculative e-money.

Trump will bring the bitcoin mining jobs back to the USA!

Trump bans US use of Venezuelan cryptocurrency:

The Trump administration on Monday banned all use by Americans of Venezuelan cryptocurrency, saying that its introduction is intended to skirt U.S. sanctions. ... In an executive order that took effect immediately upon its issuance, President Donald Trump declared illegal all U.S. transactions related to Venezuelan digital currencies, coins or tokens. The prohibition applies to all people and companies subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

It's a little disingenuous to imply Plattsburgh deliberately attracted the miners. They already had favorable electricity rates due to contracts negotiated decades ago. The flood of miners was an unintended consequence.

Right, they didn't try to attract miners specifically, they offered a discounted rate for "industrial" use, with no cap, and no requirement that the industry has local employees.

Disingenuous again. Commercial use does get declined rates, but low rates apply to everyone and everything in Plattsburgh, which is part of the problem: when the city exceeds its contracted cap, everyone's rates go up regardless of if they are a miner, a business, or an ordinary household.

These rates were negotiated back when the local hydro power plant was built, long before Bitcoin was even an idea. It's literally impossible that this was intended.

From the article: The city charged 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) when the national average is about 10 cents per kWh. And industrial operations, which include cryptocurrency operations, paid even less at 2 cents per kWh for electricity.

It was intended that industrial operations got a discount over everybody else.

Yes, and any time before about 2 years ago, industrial applications would make up for the reduced rates by employing local people. Offering reduced rates for industry is normal everywhere, and these community power stations with low local rates like in Plattsburgh are a big part of why the northeast is a major region for aluminum manufacturing.

You made the point that there was no requirement that they employ local people, and that's true, because in 1950 there was no such thing as an industrial application that didn't employ local people. Hell, in 2010 there wasn't such a thing as an industrial application that didn't employ local people. The current power contract in Plattsburgh doesn't expire until 2025. I repeat: there is no way Plattsburgh could be or have been deliberately structuring it's power system to attract bitcoin miners.

Why isn't energy use progressive like tax brackets?

That would make industry nonviable. A iron ore smelter can't afford to pay for electricity at consumer rates, and power companies can't afford to charge consumers at industrial rates.

Now, there is no justification for why that electricity should cost any different, it's purely a calculation: the idea that getting less money is still better than getting none at all, and or that keeping the jobs is worth more, politically, than lower consumer electricity bills.

Would quantum computing make e-currencies worthless? I could Google, would rather converse.

Breaking Bitcoin with a Quantum Computer

Edit: basically yes it could instantly solve the problem at the heart of the mining system.

Thanks for clearing that up.

steele's clarification was, at that time, more amplified than his obfuscation.

Don't look at me, I've been railing against "quantum" as an atheist form of Intelligent Design for years.