Kazakhstan Senate Adopts Legislation Subjecting Crypto Platforms to Financial Monitoring

November 8, 2021 Bitcoin.com

Texas should use Bitcoin mining to capture wasted natural gas: Sen. Ted Cruz

October 11, 2021 Coin Telegraph

$POWER

Senator Cruz predicts that Bitcoin mining will be used to capture wasted renewables and Texas’ power grid within five years.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz believes The United States should be using natural gas to mine Bitcoin instead of flaring it.

Speaking during the Oct. 8 Texas Blockchain Summit, Senator Cruz asserted that Bitcoin mining can be used to monetize energy created through oil and gas extraction rather than burning it, arguing that there is “enormous opportunity for Bitcoin [...] to capture that gas instead of wasting it.”

According to a transcription of the talk shared to social media by Coin Metrics founder Nic Carter, Cruz noted that half of the natural gas flared in the country is currently being burned in West Texas. “It’s being wasted because there is no transmission equipment to get that natural gas where it could be used the way natural gas would ordinarily be employed,” he added.

“Use that power to mine Bitcoin. Part of the beauty of that is the instant you’re doing it you’re helping the environment enormously because rather than flaring the natural gas you’re putting it to productive use.”

Cruz emphasized the capacity for Bitcoin mining to be mobilized reflexively in response to fluctuating energy supply, stating that energy could be immediately returned to the grid in the event of a sudden power outage or shortage.

“In five years I expect to see a dramatically different terrain with Bitcoin mining playing a significant role in strengthening and hardening the resilience of the grid,” he added.

Cruz noted that Bitcoin can be used to capture unutilized energy across the globe, arguing: “There are a lot of places on Earth where the sun shines a lot and the wind blows a lot but there aren’t any power lines and it's not economically feasible to use that energy.”

“The beauty of Bitcoin mining is that if you can connect to the internet, you can use that energy and derive value from those renewables in a way that would be impossible otherwise.”

Cruz is not alone in believing Bitcoin mining could offer an efficient means to capture renewable energy, with El Salvador recently announcing plans for a state-backed Bitcoin mining project powered by renewables.

Bitcoin mining has become a key industry for the state of Texas following China’s May crackdown on industrial Bitcoin mining firms.

Many miners turned to Texas for its cheap and abundant renewables, while others looked to Kazakhstan, Norway, and Canada to access inexpensive green electricity.

Democrat Senator lobbies agencies over the use of crypto in ransomware

September 17, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Senator Hassan wants federal agencies to take more action while Senator Lummis is more concerned with stifling innovation.

Some U.S. Senators are ramping up the anti-crypto rhetoric again, urging federal agencies to take action against the illicit use of digital assets.

Democrat Senator Maggie Hassan is the latest to raise concerns about the use of cryptocurrency as a means of payment for ransomware attacks.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee member sent a letter on Sept. 16 to several agencies including the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

In it, she aired her concerns citing a recent case in her home state of New Hampshire where $2.3 million was stolen in a cyber attack on the town of Peterborough before being converted into cryptocurrency.

“The anonymity provided by cryptocurrency has helped facilitate its use by criminals in a myriad of ways. These uses include drug sales over the dark web, payments for ransomware attacks, tax evasion, financing for terrorism and organized crime, money laundering, and more.”

She outlined the difference between centralized exchanges with KYC (know-your-customer) requirements and decentralized exchanges and OTC (over-the-counter) desks without such requirements, adding that more KYC enforcement was needed.

Senator Hassan asked a number of questions about what action agencies were taking to curb the illicit use of cryptocurrencies for ransomware.

Hassan is a member of the Senate Finance Committee alongside Senator Elizabeth Warren who labeled crypto the "new shadow bank" earlier this month. The committee has jurisdiction over matters relating to taxation and revenues, trade agreements and tariffs.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been presenting their arguments for and against cryptocurrencies as regulatory pressure mounts in the U.S.

In an interview with Reason Magazine earlier this month, Senator Cynthia Lummis said that her vision was to create a regulatory and statutory framework, adding:

“We want to make sure that Bitcoin, stablecoins, tokens can innovate and that the U.S. dollar can innovate as well and become a digital currency. So there's going to be formats that people can use that are much more user-friendly than our more old-fashioned forms of currency.”

In early August Senators Ron Wyden, Cynthia Lummis, and Pat Toomey proposed an amendment to the controversial infrastructure bill seeking clearer terminology around the crypto tax provisions to ensure it would not stifle innovation.

However, the bill passed the Senate on Aug. 10 with the language broadly classifying most actors as crypto brokers remaining unchanged. This means that software firms, network validators, stakers, and miners may be subject to third-party tax reporting requirements if the bipartisan infrastructure bill passes a final vote on September 27 as scheduled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

senator