Some of the biggest names in Bitcoin Including Jack Dorsey, Tom Lee, Michael Saylor — House Democrats calling on the Environmental Protection Agency Investigate the environmental impact of crypto mining.
Bitcoin works with Proof of Work (PoW) mining models. That is, miners around the world run powerful computers to create new Bitcoins and validate transactions.Proof of work mining, which requires sophisticated gear and large amounts of power, is effectively synonymous with Bitcoin. Ethereum — — At least for a few more months — Continue to use this method to protect your network.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) And about 20 houses Congressman wrote a letter to the EPA Last week, he asked regulators to ensure that mining companies were compliant with the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, saying, “Cryptocurrency facilities across the country have polluted the community and contributed significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. Serious concern about reporting that it is. “
In a rebuttal letter sent to EPA Chief Michael Regan on Monday morningA combination of Bitcoin miners and industry experts, and companies such as Benchmark Capital, Fidelity Investments, and Fortress Investment Group allege that House Democrats made many mistakes in their messages about the basics of proof of work mining. doing.
For one thing, the letter raises questions for lawmakers who are confusing data centers with power generation equipment.
According to the letter of rebuttal, the data center containing the “miner” Amazon, Apple, Google, MetaWhen Microsoft.. According to the letter, each is just a building that powers IT equipment to run computing workloads.
“Regulating data centers to allow computers will make a big difference in US policy,” the letter said.
“They are confusing the masses,” said Darin Feinstein, co-founder of cryptocurrency mining operators. Core Scientific — And one of the main authors of the letter. “Pollution comes from energy sources and all data centers buy electricity upstream offsite.”
Feinstein said that if the EPA wants to regulate energy production, there are already channels in place to regulate energy production facilities at the federal, state, and local levels.
“It’s very rare for the EPA to regulate the types of calculations that are done in the data center, which is clearly outside their authority,” said Nick Carter, a Castle Island venture who helped write the counter-argument. Told CNBC.
“It doesn’t make sense to ask the EPA to care what kind of calculations are being done,” Carter said.
The counter-argument is that the EPA regulates power plants, but few PoW mining companies actually own power.
“This letter sounds like there are a lot of vertically integrated miners like Stronghold and Greenidge … but that’s just a small part of the overall hash rate,” Carter continued, Bitcoin Network.
Huffman and his fellow House colleagues also have problems with specialized computing hardware. They claim that this creates a “major e-waste challenge” as millions of devices quickly become obsolete and lead to large amounts of e-waste.
The letter estimates that Bitcoin mining alone will generate 30,700 tonnes of e-waste annually. “The industry must take responsibility for this waste and discourage it from producing it,” the letter claims.
This morning’s memo to the EPA refutes e-waste’s allegations, saying that legislators have cited widely criticized research studies that make bold assumptions about the depreciation schedule for mining rigs. The letter states that the 1.3-year period assumption for depreciation is “very short,” and lawmakers speculate that the entire fleet of rigs is regularly junk.
It is unclear whether EPA will participate in a larger discussion on proof of work mining. The agency did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
