The Biden administration is crafting policy recommendations to reduce energy consumption and emissions from cryptocurrency mining, marking the first major step into an understudied area that critics say threatens U.S. climate goals and puts stress on the energy system.
The need for a new policy proposal is based on criticism of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) inability to determine energy consumption for different sectors.
Calls to regulate the cryptocurrency mining space come at a time when the U.S. is home to one of the largest mining farms in the world. The rapid growth of bitcoin mining in the U.S. is believed to increase the strain on the country’s energy system as the existing infrastructure suffers from extreme weather, aging wires and the growing use of energy sources.
White House spokesman Costa Samaras assured that the new cryptocurrency regulations would not ban or unduly hinder mining companies. According to the official, his main goal is the reasonable integration of cryptocurrencies into the global financial market. Samaras noted that mining activities contribute significantly to electricity consumption, and that the new rules are designed to address this problem.
He also stressed that the rules will not apply to transactions between individuals, and that businesses will still be free to operate in the cryptocurrency space.
Overall, it seems that the White House is taking a measured approach to regulating the nascent industry, and that mining companies will not be overly burdened by the new rules.
CEO and Founder of Cryptoconsulting,
Expert in web3 technologies – Kotov Dmitry
