The lawsuit’s plaintiffs contended that an obligatory survey by the Energy Information Administration for cryptocurrency miners was an abuse of power and politically motivated. The Energy Information Administration’s attempt to obtain data on energy usage from cryptocurrency miners has been the subject of a lawsuit filed by the Texas Blockchain Council (TBC) and mining company Riot Platforms.
TBC and Riot claimed in a filing on February 22 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas that the U.S. Department of Energy, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and their leadership had requested a “invasive” form of data collection from bitcoin miners.
Threatened with fines and penalties, the lawsuit was launched ahead of a deadline of February 23 to address an EIA survey on the electricity usage of mining businesses.
The TBC asserted that the gathering was politically driven, claiming that compelling mining companies to provide the US government access to information that may be contractual and making it available to the public would amount to an abuse of power. The group demanded that the court provide a temporary restraining order to halt the data collecting, criticising Senator Elizabeth Warren and the White House for coordinating the EIA move.
“This legal challenge is not about fighting a single request for confidential data,” stated Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council. It’s a safeguard against a more widespread trend of overreaching regulations that endangers the foundation of economic progress and innovation. If the government can treat one business in this way, then all other industries that lose favour with the ruling administration will follow suit.
In an attempt to compile a “baseline snapshot” of the nation’s miners’ energy usage, the Department of Energy classified the required gathering of data from cryptocurrency miners as a “emergency” request. Politicians may exploit the data for politically motivated attacks on Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market, according to critics of the Energy Department’s decision, who have questioned the necessity of the data collecting.
Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who has supported numerous bills in Congress that support cryptocurrency, wrote OMB director Shalanda Young on February 20 to inquire about the purpose of the EIA survey. The congressman made the claim that the Biden administration was trying to harm cryptocurrency miners in order to pass laws combating climate change.
The complaint will be heard in Texas on February 23 at 5:30 p.m. UTC in order to handle it before the EIA deadline, according to the TBC.