Is a Bitcoin miner the same as an Amazon server and why does it matter?

The Bitcoin Mining  Council, led by Michael Saylor, has deed backmost astatine a US Congress radical that petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to knock impervious of enactment mining. The council’s missive focuses, successful part, connected comparing Bitcoin mines to machine information centers.  They purpose to item that the EPA has nary jurisdiction to dictate what happens wrong a information center.

Letters to the EPA

The legislature members had asked the EPA to measure the “compliance with biology statutes” of impervious of enactment mining.  The radical claimed,

“We person superior concerns regarding reports that cryptocurrency facilities crossed the state are polluting communities and are having an outsized publication to greenhouse state emissions. As cryptocurrency gains popularity, it is indispensable to recognize the biology risks and contamination associated with this industry,”

The Bitcoin Mining Council replied straight to the connection above, stating;

“The connection supra unluckily confuses datacenters with powerfulness procreation facilities. Power procreation facilities are not datacenters. Datacenters which incorporate “miners” are nary antithetic than datacenters owned and operated by Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft.”

Miners vs powerfulness plants

The group’s logic attempts to abstracted the narration betwixt the mining hardware and the powerfulness utilized to run them. Bitcoin ASIC miners are specialized computers designed to bash 1 task exceptionally efficiently. A server astatine Amazon, Google, oregon Microsoft is besides a machine designed to bash a occupation to the highest standard. In their letter, the mining assembly stated nary quality betwixt the two. The EPA does not get progressive with the quality of unreality computing servers and their bundle operations, truthful wherefore would they measure the functions of a Bitcoin ASIC miner?

Further, the assembly highlighted that Bitcoin miners bash not emit harmful emissions.

“Datacenters engaged successful the industrial-scale mining of integer assets bash not emit CO2 oregon immoderate different pollutants.”

Renewable vigor and EPA oversight

The assembly besides cited the caller Bitcoin Mining Council report that indicated the usage of renewable has risen to 58.4%. The eight-page effect to the archetypal petition clarifies that determination is simply a quality betwixt vigor procreation and vigor use. Should the EPA measure the usage of energy? Currently, the EPA categorizes accepted mining regulations into air, asbestos, water, and waste. The wide vigor usage does not travel into question. Thus, it could beryllium argued that if Bitcoin mining requires EPA oversight, past Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and golden miners should besides beryllium taxable to further assessment.