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As the U.S. Congress prepares to conduct a thorough study of the energy use of crypto mining, the witness list for Thursday’s hearing included more proponents of blockchain technology than its direct critics.
The House Energy and Business Oversight Subcommittee last week announced a hearing on “Cleaning Up Cryptocurrencies: The Energy Implications of Blockchain,” which itself is scheduled for Thursday. The hearing will focus on the energy and environmental impacts of crypto mining, especially as it pertains to networks using proof-of-work or PoW consensus mechanisms.
Energy and Commerce Commission Staff Memorandum release The list of witnesses invited to testify was released on January 17.Of the five experts on the list, only one — Cornell Institute professor Ari Juels — can be identified Classification As an outspoken critic of Bitcoin (bitcoin) is mined in its current form. Ironically, Juels was one of two authors of a 1999 paper that defined and introduced the term “proof of work”.
Another entry on the witness list is former U.S. Comptroller of the Currency and Binance.US CEO Brian Brooks Join BitFury in November 2021, a major player in the crypto mining industry, as CEO. Also notable was the presence of John Belizaire, CEO of Soluna Computing, a company focused on developing green data centers for batch computing. In a January 6 blog post, Belizaire commend Bitcoin’s energy consumption is a “feature, not a bug,” arguing that it provides a viable mechanism to absorb excess renewable energy.
The utility provider will be represented by Steve Wright, the recently retired former general manager of the Chelan County Utilities District in Washington state.During his tenure, Wright took steps absorb Cryptocurrency miners in the county.
Gregory Zerzan, Jordan Ramis shareholder, former acting assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury, former famous Concerns about Bitcoin mining can be addressed by “transitioning from fossil fuels.”
The memo itself provides a fairly balanced overview of energy-related issues associated with PoW mining, although it also reiterates certain statements questioned by recent research.On the one hand, the authors suggest that the energy consumption and environmental impact of crypto mining may increase in the coming years — a claim published in a Bitcoin Policy Institute report. Fact Checking Handbook.
Jake Chervinsky, head of policy at the Clockchain Association, tweeted that the memo was “not all bad, but fundamentally wrong.”
The House E&C Committee released a nine-page memo for this week’s hearing on crypto energy use. It’s not all bad, but there are some basic mistakes like repeating the “per trade” carbon fallacy.
Read it here and watch it Thursday at 10:30am ET: https://t.co/AgMes2zOwf
— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) January 18, 2022
The hearing is scheduled for January 20 at 10:30 a.m. EST and will take place at streaming here.
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