US energy officials agree to ‘destroy’ all data from crypto mining survey

Mar 2, 202401:44 UTC

United States energy officials have reached an agreement with the Texas Blockchain Council (TBC) and Bitcoin mining firm Riot Platforms to cease its proposed emergency survey targeting crypto miners across the country.

According to a March 2 filing, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have settled with the TBC and Riot to stop gathering information from crypto miners for its proposed three-year emergency survey filed under the “EIA-862 Emergency Collection Request.”

It further noted that all information previously collected from crypto miners for the survey — which the TBC and Riot claimed was intrusive — will be deleted, and any forthcoming data will also be discarded.

“Defendants agree that EIA will destroy any information that it has already received in response to the EIA-862 Emergency Survey. If EIA receives additional information in response to the EIA-862 Emergency Survey, EIA will destroy that data.”

The settlement effectively cancels the temporary restraining order, which was set to be in place until March 8.

On Feb. 23, Cointelegraph reported that the court had temporarily suspended the U.S. energy regulators from collecting the data while the lawsuit was ongoing.

This came after the TBC and Riot convinced the judge that irreversible harm would happen without prohibiting further data collection.

The plaintiffs claimed that the survey posed potential damages including non-recoverable costs of compliance with the survey, a credible threat of prosecution if they do not comply, and the disclosure of proprietary information requested.