The White House has reportedly started working on a new report that will examine how much crypto mining affects global climate and the power grid in the US, Bloomberg Law reports.
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to get daily short digests about events that shape the crypto world
Although it is unclear if any policy actions to follow the report, the Biden administration wants to assess all the areas that might be affected by crypto mining, starting from noise pollution to the energy efficiency of using different mining algorithms.
Costa Samaras, the Principal Assistant Director for Energy at The White House, said the administration wants to be sure that the industry is "developed responsibly and minimizes total emissions" in case this is going to be "part of our financial system in any meaningful way." He added:
"We need to think about what would be the appropriate policy responses under a world that shifted to proof-of-stake, or a world that has some continuous mix of proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. Proof-of-work is energy-intensive by design, but it also increases security."
The report — expected to be ready by August this year — has to answer the main question of whether the authorities should provide the economic incentive for miners "to turn off their servers, given the opportunity to make money by running all the time."
The move comes after the US President Joe Biden signed an executive order to study the legal and economic conditions for developing a US central bank digital currency (CBDC), and how the US authorities can protect crypto investors.
Access more than 50 of the world's financial markets directly from your EXANTE account – including NASDAQ, London Stock Exchange and Tokyo Stock Exchange