The Texas Blockchain Council, an industry group for Bitcoin miners including Riot Platforms, is suing the U.S. Department of Energy's Statistics Division over mandatory surveys of electricity consumption.
The group said in a Feb. 22 statement that the Energy Information Administration investigation was an “unprecedented and illegal data collection request” against the industry. Riot, one of the state's largest Bitcoin miners, made $71 million last year. Part of that is due to pre-purchasing power for businesses during power shortages and selling some of it back to the grid at a premium.
In response to the lawsuit, EIA said in a court filing that it will not enforce the requirement to complete the study and will sequester data already collected.
Bitcoin miners will account for 2.3% of the nation's total electricity demand in 2023, the EIA estimated in a Feb. 1 report, and even at the low end of that range, 0.6%, it will use as much electricity as the state of Utah. It is said to be equivalent to The agency earlier said it aimed to more accurately assess the industry's electricity consumption through the poll.
Bitcoin mining began in the United States 10 years ago, but after the Chinese government banned Bitcoin mining in 2021, there was an influx of mining companies from China, the world's former mining hub. A number of mining companies have gone public and established large-scale companies in the United States. -Expand business scale in energy-rich states such as Texas and Georgia.
Collecting data on energy consumption from Bitcoin miners has been difficult because some of the data, such as site location and electricity costs, can be considered proprietary to the miner.
“Together with our industry partners, TBC considers this to be a direct attack on a private company under the guise of an emergency, without legitimate basis and indicative of clear political bias,” TBC said in a statement. .
David Pan, Bloomberg News