The Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC) has responded to a letter sent last month by Democratic lawmakers to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan with a letter of its own attempting to rectify inaccuracies about Bitcoin mining. (BTC) and its environmental impact.
Drafted by him CEO of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor, Castle Island Ventures partner, Nick Carter, Y Darin Feinstein, From Core Scientific, the BMC letter, which has more than 50 signatories, highlights alleged errors in the document sent to Regan. Specific, the authors claim that the original letter, signed by Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman and 22 congressmen, “confuses data centers with power generation facilities,” among other inaccuracies.
Certain members of Congress sent a letter to the EPA premised on several misperceptions about #bitcoin mining. We have authored a response to clear up the confusion, correct inaccuracies, and educate the public. https://t.co/Ks6fh9Cg0Z
—Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) May 2, 2022
Some members of Congress sent a letter to the EPA based on various misperceptions about #Bitcoin mining. We have drafted a response to clear up confusion, correct inaccuracies, and educate the public.
The Democrats’ letter urges the EPA to ensure that digital asset miners comply with “critical environmental statutes such as the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act” and goes on to air several concerns related to cryptocurrency mining, such as electronic waste and noise pollution. The BMC letter focuses on eight points and extensively refutes them.
According to the industry group, the original letter’s claim that Bitcoin mining facilities across the country are “polluting communities” is inaccurate. According to the BMC, Bitcoin mining facilities do not produce pollution, but power generation facilities do. The fact of not making that distinction appears more than once. The authors also debunk what they consider to be misinformation, such as “a single Bitcoin transaction could power the average US household for a month.”
However, the BMC may have revealed its own biases in its response to the claim that Proof-of-Stake (PoS) processing is less energy intensive. After making several criticisms of the PoS consensus, the industry group states the following:
“Since Proof of Stake and Proof of Work are qualitatively different, it is misleading to refer to Proof of Stake as a more “efficient” form of Proof of Work, as it does not accomplish the same thing.”
The letter also notes that many miners are engaged in high-performance computing, which has many beneficial applications beyond Bitcoin and digital assets.
The BMC is an industry association open to all Bitcoin miners. It originated from a meeting of North American Bitcoin miners started by Michael Saylor in May 2021. Currently, the group has 44 “advisory members”. He has also published several reports on the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining and proof-of-work in general. Some of the conclusions of their reports have been disputed.
The BMC letter was signed by some of the crypto industry’s most prominent names and supporters, including jack dorsey of Block Inc., the senior vice president of Fidelity Investments, Tom Jessop, Fordham Law School professor Donna Redell, Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein and the founder of SkyBridge Capital, Anthony Scaramucci.
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