At 11:30 a.m. today in Waco, Texas, the Texas Blockchain Council and Riot Platforms, Inc. asked U.S. District Judge Alan Albright for a temporary restraining order blocking the Energy Information Administration from conducting an “urgent” investigation.
At that hearing, government lawyers proposed a voluntary declaration from EIA Administrator DeCarolis that would halt enforcement and collections for four weeks. Judge Albright recognized that the government’s offer here was nothing more than an empty promise without any sort of enforcement mechanism, and directed the government to work with the plaintiffs to draft a negotiating order that would fully bind the government to:
- The survey will be suspended for an agreed 4-week period.
- Anyone who has not yet complied will be reminded that they do not need to do so at this time. and
- We provide confirmation that all information received to date or intermittently received will be isolated from the agency and will not be utilized.
Additionally, the order is nationwide in scope, meaning it applies to all miners in the United States.
If the government fails to reach an agreement by 3 p.m. today, the judge said he would issue a temporary injunction to the same effect as above but move up the permanent injunction hearing.
We’ll know more in a few hours once final orders are entered, but at least for now it appears the EIA has stopped collecting (presumably illegal) “emergency” data.
Here is a link to the case file:
update: The EIA has agreed to temporarily suspend investigations into mining machine energy use.
This is a guest post by Colin Crossman. The opinions expressed are solely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.