New York lawmakers pass landmark bill to limit cryptocurrency mining

New York lawmakers have passed a milestone environmental measure designed to tap the brakes on the spread of cryptocurrency mining operations that burn fossil fuels.

Both supporters and opponents say that the closely watched bill, approved early Friday by the state Senate, is the first of its kind in the U.S.

If it becomes law, it would establish a two-year moratorium on new and renewed air permits for fossil fuel power plants used for energy-intensive proof-of-work cryptocurrency mining a term for the computational process that records and secures transactions in bitcoin and similar forms of digital money. Proof-of-work is the blockchain-based algorithm used by bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies.