US Energy Officials Agree To ‘Destroy’ All Data From Crypto Mining Research.
US energy officials have reached an agreement to end an emergency investigation by the Texas Blockchain Council (TBC) and Bitcoin mining company Riot Platform targeting crypto miners across the country.
According to a March 2 filing, the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration (EIA) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) agreed with TBC and Riot on a proposed three-year emergency fund survey of crypto miners submitted under “EIA-862 Emergency Funding Request.” .
All data previously collected from crypto miners for the survey — which TBC and Riot said interfered with — will be deleted and any incoming data will be discarded as well.
“Defendants agree that EIA will destroy any information it receives in response to the EIA-862 Emergency Study. If EIA receives additional information in response to the EIA-862 Emergency Study, EIA will destroy that information.”
The settlement effectively lifted a temporary restraining order that had been in effect until March 8.
On February 23, Cointelegraph reported that the court has temporarily barred US energy regulators from collecting the data while the lawsuit continues.
This happened after TBC and Riot convinced the judge that irreparable harm would occur without preventing further data collection.
The plaintiffs allege that the survey may result in damages, including sunk costs of complying with the survey, the risk of a lawsuit if they do not comply, and disclosure of the requested proprietary information.
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Although the EIA estimated that the survey would take about 30 minutes to complete, the court found the estimate to be “grossly inaccurate”.
TBC and Riot disputed the estimate, stating that the cost of compliance so far was more than 40 hours.
However, TBC and Riot both agreed that EIA could file a new notice seeking two months of public comment on the data it was allowed to collect.
“Defendants agree that EIA will allow 60 days from the date of publication of the new Federal Register notice to submit comments,” the filing states.
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