I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but both the Republicans and Democrats made a unanimous decision in favour of Bitcoin Mining (in Missouri). Legislation passed the “Digital Asset Mining Protection Act.” This is a massive victory in the crypto industry, brought by the Satoshi Action Fund. This is now the second state to pass such a law, Montana being the first!
The Right To Mine Bitcoin
As crazy as it seems, the government feels they need to have a say in how the “free nation” should handle its cryptocurrencies. To be honest, it’s ridiculous that there even needs to be a declaration for a “right to mine”, but here we are.
The first time we saw Mining threats date back to 2021 as California legislators released an article explaining that PC will only be allowed to consume a certain amount of power. They cited greenhouse gases and climate change as the inventive for the bill. However, it primarily affected those who made their money with crypto mining rigs.
Thankfully they seem to have backed down on their decision, as gaming PCs were affected by the decision too. This caused some backlash enough to let legislators rethink their decision. Since then, California has actually eased up on its cryptocurrency laws drastically. California turned into one of the most crypto-friendly in the US. Unfortunately, others have halted crypto mining too.
In both New York and Canada’s British Columbia, crypto mining was made illegal. This will take place for atleast 18 months as the governments battled in court over the issue.
The Satoshi Action Fund, a non-profit company that refers to itself as the “Bitcoin Mining Advocacy Organization,” pushed legislators in Missouri to pass the bill. Over the last few years, the Sotashi Action team has kept regulation against cryptocurrencies at bay. This is just another victory to add to their records.
According to the Satoshi Action team and CEO Dennis Porter, they will “only continue pushing their advocacy, with these moments as proof of their efforts.”
The SatoshiActionFund is primarily working on the public right to mine, and won a similar battle with Montana just a month ago; next on their list is Mississippi.
What You Need To Know About Missouri’s “Digital Asset Mining Protection Act”
According to Mussouri’s House Bill No. 764, five new sections relating to virtual currency, with penalty provisions, were added.
(1) “Digital asset mining”, the process of using a computer to secure a blockchain network, including the electricity usage needed to do so;
(2) “Digital asset mining business”, any operation with a group of computers working at a single site that consumes more than one megawatt of electricity for the purpose of generating digital assets by securing a blockchain network
(3) “Discriminatory rates”, the charging of rates for electricity that are substantially different from the rates charged for other industrial uses of electricity in similar geographic areas;
(4) “Home digital asset mining”, digital asset mining in an area zoned for residential use;
(5) “Node”, a computational device that contains a copy of a blockchain ledger.”
The passing of the bill brings protection to crypto mining in both business and private use cases. It also prevents the state from enforcing data center requirements (and other businesses) to end crypto mining. Essentially, crypto companies cannot be singled out by law.
It also prevents the state from specifically changing the Bitcoin mining zoning requirements without a proper notice period. All of this seems extremely elementary, and it’s truly a surprise that we need to consider these things, but hey! Maybe New Yorkers will move their mining stations to Missouri for a bit!
Crypto mining turned into a lucrative business and reached its peak potential back in 2021. But since the ETH Merge to Proof-of-Stake, mining in general has become much less profitable. In the US, it comes with many headaches, and most choose to move their mining rigs to alternate countries and mine remotely.
PoW with Tor Browser
Over the past few years, more users have requested that the Tor Project changes their browser to a Proof Of Work concept. However, the team has not made any comments on this just yet, almost every .Onion link is extremely slow from some harsh DDoS attacks against the network. Prominent names in the Darknet Market space have voiced their opinions. The slow network speeds have even forced many to use alternative methods to access the darknet, such as i2p.
While crypto mining in the US is not the most lucrative business (depending on the token) due to its exceptionally high electrical bills, PoW mining for use cases like what the Tor community is pushing for would technically be affected by the new regulations coming into effect.
Let us know in the comments if you think Tor should change to a PoW Network.
Hey there, I’m a dark web geek who’s been around for the last 8 years. More precisely, I’m livedarknet’s senior content writer who’s been writing about darknet marketplaces, tutorials, and cybersecurity stuff for educational purposes.