US energy officials commit to eradicating all data from survey on crypto mining

Energy officials in the United States have reached an agreement with the Texas Blockchain Council (TBC) and Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms to halt their proposed emergency survey targeting crypto miners in the country. According to a court filing on March 2, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have settled with the TBC and Riot to cease collecting information from crypto miners for their proposed three-year emergency survey, known as the “EIA-862 Emergency Collection Request.” The settlement includes deleting all previously collected information from crypto miners and discarding any future data. This agreement effectively cancels the temporary restraining order, which was initially set to be in place until March 8. The court had temporarily suspended the U.S. energy regulators from collecting the data while the lawsuit was ongoing after the TBC and Riot argued that irreversible harm would occur without prohibiting further data collection. The plaintiffs claimed that the survey posed potential damages, including non-recoverable compliance costs, a credible threat of prosecution for non-compliance, and the disclosure of proprietary information. The estimated completion time of the survey, which the EIA stated to be around 30 minutes, was deemed “extremely inaccurate” by the court. The TBC and Riot also disputed the estimate, stating that the cost of compliance had already exceeded 40 hours. However, both parties agreed that the EIA could issue a new notice to seek public feedback for two months on the information it is permitted to collect.