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Earlier this month, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced its intention to gather basic information about the energy consumed by bitcoin mining. In making the decision, the DOE noted that the share of bitcoin mining happening in the US has shot up by a factor of over 10 just within the last three years, leaving the activity consuming as much electricity as a fairly populous state.

To understand what this means for the US grid and its reliability, the DOE planned to gather information from large bitcoin mining operations within the US. But that plan has now been put on hold by a judge, who issued a restraining order against the DOE in response to a lawsuit filed by miners. In the decision, the judge suggested that bitcoin miners’ issues with the plan were likely to see it permanently blocked.

Mining suit

While it’s theoretically possible to mine bitcoin only during periods where production of renewable energy exceeds demand, doing so would leave a lot of hardware idle most days. In making its decision to monitor these operations, the DOE also gathered evidence that showed mining operations had inflated demand for power from a number of fossil fuel plants and were thus either competing with other users of that power or causing unnecessary carbon emissions. Both of those issues are within the DOE’s purview.