Letter from the Bitcoin Community to the Environmental Protection Agency | Bitcoin Mining Council bitcoinminingcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Bitcoin_Letter_to_the_Environmental_Protection_Agency.pdf
360 sats \ 9 comments \ @BTCMiner 2 May 2022 bitcoin
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52 sats \ 0 replies \ @shyfire 2 May 2022
Once again we see the competent industrial players correcting the misguided perceptions of braindead politicians. It would be nice to see a competent politician for a change who actually understands complex topics and does not think it's just a series of tubes.
Sidenote: given what we saw with the shitcoinery (I believe it was SOL) at the highest levels of the EU parliament in the recently leaked EU documents, it's probably safe to assume that there was some equivalent shitcoinery going on behind the scenes with these "members of congress" who sent the original letter to the EPA.
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31 sats \ 1 reply \ @BTCMiner OP 2 May 2022
It is imperative that elected officials in the United States recognize that bitcoin, and the innovation of Proof of Work, is the most important financial, economic, and accounting innovation in the history of humanity.
Bitcoin processes a similar number of yearly transactions to the Fedwire settlement system, which settles trillions of dollars’ worth of value daily. It is therefore eminently plausible for Bitcoin to grow into a utility-scale settlement system without changing its parameters at all.
Thus, even if the number of payments settling to Bitcoin increase by many orders of magnitude, that does not imply a commensurate increase in energy consumption.
Proof of Stake is not a ‘mining technology’, it is a technique to determine authority over a distributed ledger, but it does not achieve decentralized distribution.
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31 sats \ 0 replies \ @BTCMiner OP 2 May 2022
Conclusion:
  1. There is a difference between a datacenter and a power generation facility. This difference is material and was completely ignored by the Letter.
  2. There is no meaningful difference between a “digital asset mining facility” and datacenters run by Google, Apple, Microsoft. Each is just a building in which electricity powers IT equipment to run computing workloads. Regulating what datacenters allow their computers to do would be a massive shift in policy in the United States.
  3. Some datacenters run only blockchain workloads. Other datacenters run none. Still other datacenters, including many owned by industry giants like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, run some of each. Censoring blockchain activity isn’t practical.
  4. The EPA and other regulatory and law enforcement agencies should require all power generation facilities to adhere to all applicable laws and regulations.
  5. The EPA and other regulatory and law enforcement agencies should require all datacenter facilities, which emit no pollutants, including CO2, to also adhere to all applicable laws and regulations.
  6. If a data center is violating noise ordinances, their operators should be forced to comply with local and regional noise and nuisance ordinances.
  7. If a data center is failing to dispose properly of obsolete circuit boards, whether the circuit boards contain chips that secure voice communications or chips that secure the Bitcoin blockchain, is irrelevant. The data center operator should dispose of them in an environmentally responsible manner.
  8. If a datacenter is abiding by all laws and regulations, the content or type of computational workloads should be irrelevant.
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39 sats \ 0 replies \ @itsrealfake 2 May 2022
Raises a question for me...
How many transactions does SWIFT process per day? Surely fewer than the bitcoin network?
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @BTCMiner OP 2 May 2022
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://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Bitcoin_Letter_to_the_Environmental_Protection_Agency.pdf
https://twitter.com/saylor/status/1521106193997086721
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @BTCMiner OP 2 May 2022
Data Centers & Power Generation Facilities
  1. Are not the same
  2. Bitcoin mining facilities are Data centers NOT power generation facilities
  3. Data centers emit ZERO pollutants
  4. Bitcoin miners emit ZERO pollutants
  5. Bitcoin miners emit ZERO carbon
  6. The eWaste issue is FAKE
https://twitter.com/saylor/status/1521106193997086721
https://twitter.com/DarinFeinstein/status/1521108019987243009
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @BTCMiner OP 2 May 2022
Here's an article in Decrypt about this:
The document outlines eight specific “misperceptions” initially highlighted in the April 20 letter from House Democrats.
Saylor, Dorsey, Other Bitcoin Advocates Send Letter to EPA Rebutting House Democrats' 'Misperceptions' - Decrypt https://decrypt.co/99200/saylor-dorsey-other-bitcoin-advocates-send-letter-epa-rebutting-house-democrats-misperceptions
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @BTCMiner OP 3 May 2022
And an article in Bitcoin Magazine:
Michael Saylor, Jack Dorsey, Fidelity Investments, and others belonging to the Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC) gathered to author an open-letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) refuting misconceptions of bitcoin energy consumption as it relates to mining.
The letter penned by the BMC is a response to another letter sent on April 20, 2022 that states a need for regulatory actions against bitcoin mining and other cryptocurrencies that use proof-of-work consensus models. The primary signatory for the letter sent on April 20 was Jared Huffman and was signed by another 22 sitting members of congress.
The letter from the BMC outlined many misconceptions that were detailed in Huffman’s letter.
Michael Saylor, Jack Dorsey Pen Letter To EPA Refuting Bitcoin Energy FUD https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/michael-saylor-jack-dorsey-pen-letter-to-epa-refuting-bitcoin-energy-fud
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BTCMiner OP 3 May 2022
And from BTC Times:
Michael Saylor and Jack Dorsey Crush Bitcoin Mining Concerns With Letter to EPA https://www.btctimes.com/news/michael-saylor-and-jack-dorsey-crush-bitcoin-mining-concerns-with-letter-to-epa
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