U.S. energy authorities have come to an agreement with the Texas Blockchain Commission (TBC) and Riot Platforms, a Bitcoin mining company, to halt emergency investigations into cryptocurrency miners across the nation. According to documents filed on March 2, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have reached settlements with TBC and Riot to cease collecting proposed information from cryptocurrency miners on three counts under the Annual emergency investigation filed under EIA-862 Emergency Collection Request.
The agreement also mandates the deletion of all previously collected information from crypto miners for the investigation, which TBC and Riot argued was intrusive. Any upcoming data collection efforts will also be discarded. The settlement effectively ends the temporary restraining order that was set to take effect on March 8.
On February 23 that a court had put a stop to the U.S. energy regulator’s data collection while the lawsuit was ongoing. TBC and Riot convinced the judge that irreversible harm would occur if further data collection was not halted.
Plaintiffs assert that the investigation resulted in potential harm, including irreparable costs for complying, credible threats of prosecution for non-compliance, and the disclosure of proprietary information. The court found the estimated time for completing the investigation, as provided by the EIA, to be "grossly inaccurate," while TBC and Riot argued that compliance costs to date have exceeded 40 hours.
However, both parties agreed to allow the EIA to issue a new notice seeking public feedback for a period of two months on the information it is permitted to collect. The filing stipulates that comments must be submitted within 60 days of the publication of the new Federal Register notice.
