Josh Riley Won’t Talk About The Role Of Cryptocurrency In High Utility Bills

Congressman Josh Riley keeps scapegoating foreigners for increased utility bills.

Market analysis shows data centers used by cryptocurrency miners and generative AI schemes are to blame for higher electric bills.

Why won’t Josh Riley talk about that Link?

Full Transcript:

This week’s episode is about an issue that has been at the top of Josh Riley's agenda, at the top of his priorities as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. It's probably at the top of your priority list, too, because it's the rapid increase in utilities prices that we've all experienced over the last year.

We're talking about utility bills that are $100, $150 higher than they were just a year ago. All of a sudden, they just shot up, maybe something like 50%.

You could have a small house that's relatively efficient, and, you know, it doesn't matter. You're all of a sudden paying a significant amount of money, more every month. In these times, that's hard, because we've got inflation, because of Donald Trump's tariffs. The job market is not looking good.

And by the way, this doesn't just impact homeowners, this impacts businesses as well. Businesses have to use electricity, and if they're paying more, they're making less money, which means fewer jobs. The economic impacts have been really difficult. They've been quite devastating for upstate New York.

Here’s some of what Josh Riley has said about this issue

“If NYSEG and its multinational owners want to hike rates on Upstate families, then they can show up, look us in the eye, and answer for it.”

“I’m intervening to demand full transparency, real public engagement, and proof that every dollar NYSEG collects actually helps our communities—not corporate profits overseas.”

“NYSEG is yanking millions out of working families’ pockets and wiring it overseas to their parent company. It’s gross.”

“If NYSEG and its foreign parent corporation want to hike rates, they have to start answering some difficult questions about where our money is going.”

There's a common element in what Josh Riley is talking about: Josh Riley is talking about how NYSEG is a foreign company or is owned by foreigners and how these controlling parent companies are overseas.

He seems quite obsessed with that idea, that if your electric and natural gas, if your utility bill is high, the problem for him seems to be that that money is going to foreigners, that foreigners are somehow involved. It strikes me because this is taking place in the context of a lot of scapegoating of foreigners in other aspects in American politics these days.

It reminds me of how consistently Josh Riley has blamed foreigners for other problems, like crime here in the United States, even though there is no foreigner crime wave. In fact, U.S. Citizens have a higher rate of committing crimes than foreigners do, but that didn't stop Josh Riley from supporting the right wing fascist Laken Riley Act, which gave the Department of Homeland Security the power to detain people merely on the suspicion of crimes, to deport people merely for being accused of crimes without having any right to a fair trial.

He did that because the people that that law targeted were foreigners and jobs. Josh Riley said, we ought to be concerned about foreigners in New York's 19th congressional district.

There was another bill that I talked about in an earlier podcast episode, which was supported by Josh Riley because, Congressman Riley claimed, we need to stop the foreigners from China buying up farmland in upstate New York.

Of course, the real reality is that there is no massive buy up of farmland in upstate New York by people from China. It's just not happening.

Once again, Josh Riley activated that xenophobia, that fear, that hatred of foreigners to justify his support for that bill. Now, with Josh Riley's inquiries into the sudden increase of utility bills, he's going after the foreigners again.

I want to offer up an alternative explanation, an explanation that is backed up by actual facts, researched by professionals at a company called Monitoring Analytics, as part of a market analysis that was recently released about what's behind sudden rate increases in our utility bills.

Now, this particular report has to do with mid Atlantic states like Pennsylvania, going over to Ohio and down to Virginia .

But what's happening in that group of states is pretty much identical with what's happening in New York State.

And this report, which I'm going to link to in the show notes, so that you can look at it for yourself.

This report does not say that foreigners are to blame for your increased electric and gas bills.

It's not foreigners.

“Data center load growth is the primary reason for recent and expected capacity market conditions, including total forecast, load growth, the tight supply and demand balance, and high prices… It is misleading to assert that the capacity market results are simply just a reflection of supply and demand . The current conditions are not the result of organic load growth. The current conditions in the capacity market are almost entirely the result of large load additions from data centers , both actual historical and forecast. The growth in data center load and the expected future growth in data Center load are unique and unprecedented and uncertain and require a different approach than simply asserting that it is supply and demand.”

Okay, the upshot is this: The primary cause of increases in your utility bills have to do with data centers.

What are data centers? It's a really weird phrase that doesn’t give a full picture of what these facilities are.

Data centers are gigantic sets of computer banks, often housed in old power plants or facilities that take power out of our electrical grid. Companies are setting up huge new data centers for two main reasons: Generative artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency mining.

Now, cryptocurrency mining is not mining in the sense of going down, digging into the Earth to look for ores containing iron or gold or platinum.

That's not what cryptocurrency mining is. Cryptocurrency mining is mostly happening with Bitcoin. In cryptocurrency mining is that you have computers running abstract math problems that are very, very complex, difficult to solve, take a lot of computing power .

They're doing the cryptocurrency mining for no other reason than to win a repeated lottery that gives companies the chance to own a little piece of a cryptocurrency, a bit of Bitcoin, because there is an artificial scarcity in cryptocurrency markets that props them up, that keeps them going.

So what you have are entire warehouse sized buildings filled with high power computers, running at maximum speed, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, sucking a huge amount of electricity, and they're doing so for no other reason than to make their investors some money in the form of cryptocurrency.

Of course, artificial intelligence is also a part of this. Every time you're chatting with chat GPT or you use one of those generative AI engines to make a funny little picture, that doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from actual facilities, just jam packed, full of very powerful computers, and they're running hot, and they have to be cooled, and they have to be power powered by a lot of electricity. This is very energy intensive.

This report tells us what's going on with the sudden NYSEG rate increase — why your bills are suddenly higher.

Generative AI is not free, and cryptocurrency's rapid expansion under the deregulation under Donald Trump doesn't come for free either.

There is a social cost to this. Part of that social cost is you paying $75 or $100 more every month so that people can make money off of cryptocurrency and generative AI.

Josh Riley never talks about the link between cryptocurrency, generative AI, and your higher electric and gas bills.

Josh Riley is calling for hearings, and he's doing surveys and things like that, as if there is not already information that's out there, but he never talks about the role of cryptocurrency and generative artificial intelligence in the increase of your utility bills. Why is that?

The people behind generative artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency were the biggest donors to congressional campaigns in the 2024 elections, through which Josh Riley was brought into office.

This summer, Josh Riley voted for two bills to help Donald Trump deregulate cryptocurrency, at the very same time that cryptocurrency data centers were creating an increase in your utility bills.

That’s the reason that Josh Riley is not talking about the role of cryptocurrency and generative AI.

Congressman Josh Riley is correct to identify utility bills as a significant economic issue, a kitchen table issue for working families in upstate New York, but Riley is studiously avoiding talking about the role of cryptocurrency in increasing your utilities bills.

Instead, he's focusing on foreigners.

NYSEG has been owned by foreign companies for quite some time now. That hasn't changed.

What's new is that we have cryptocurrency and generative artificial intelligence data centers.

Next week's episode about Josh Riley Watch is about one specific data center that is being built right here in New York's 19th congressional district.

Data centers can seem like an abstract problem, cryptocurrency, an abstract problem, but next week we're going to talk about one specific data center that is coming right here to our congressional district, and the impact that data center is going to have. 

During the next week, I want you to go online, and I want you to search to see if Josh Riley is talking at all about the link between higher electric bills and the proliferation of cryptocurrency data centers.

If Josh Riley isn’t talking about it, what's preventing him from speaking out?