Kentucky will offer tax breaks to cryptocurrency miners who operate in the energy-rich commonwealth under a pair of laws Governor Andy Beshear signed Thursday.
- Senate Bill 255 extends the commonwealth's clean energy-focused incentives to miners who invest at least $1 million in equipment. House Bill 230 similarly offers miners a series of sales and excise tax breaks.
- Together, the bills work to woo cryptocurrency miners, and thus business revenue and jobs, to communities whose economies have been ravaged by a manufacturing exodus from Kentucky but retain an abundance of cheap energy.
- Kentucky wants "to become a national leader in emerging industries which use substantial amounts of energy," said one of the bills. Cryptocurrency mining is indeed a major consumer of energy.
- The bills marched through Kentucky's legislature following their introduction earlier this year.