President Donald Trump’s subsequent name has given the crypto industry a new lease of life, propelling Bitcoin to an all-time high of practically$ 109, 000 and promising pleasant policies for an industry that is usually accustomed to battling hard-line U.S. lawmakers and regulators.
Under President Trump, who promised to mine all remaining Bitcoin in the U.S. last year, market observers speculate that President Trump’s laissez-faire strategy to weather troubles may give a go to a mining industry that has for centuries struggled to reduce its carbon footprint.
” I think it’s safe to say Trump’s presidency is going to mean less attention for the Bitcoin mining industry in the U. S.”, Alex de Vries—an anti-mining advocate, power researcher, and chairman of —told .
In his inaugural address next month, Trump pledged to use the “largest amount of oil and oil of any country on Earth” along with President Biden’s broad reset of the country’s stricter climate requirements.
Following the California wildfires in January, past New York Congressman Lee Zeldin, Trump’s candidate to guide the Environmental Protection Agency, also stated that the federal agency is not required to oversee carbon dioxide emissions.
The Supreme Court did no rule that if a blaze broke out in California in 2025 and that it would cause the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide. There’s really more to that”, Zeldin said.
Given the Trump administration’s initial indications that the EPA might not be particularly focused on economic security overall, it makes it even less probable that many governmental consideration will be given to the effect of Bitcoin mine.
” It’s a killer. We were hopeful that the Biden administration may at least talk to us, but now that Donald Trump is back in the White House, it feels hopeless”, Jackie Sawicky, the Texas resident behind the National Coalition Against Cryptomining, told . He has appointed a member of the EPA who doesn’t appear to be interested in enforcing climate privileges.
The process of mine bitcoins has long been contentious. Proof-of-work sites like Currency’s need powerful computers to operate 24/7 in order to secure the blockchain—and the requires only grow over time. In terms of terawatt hours ( TWh ), a unit of energy equivalent to one trillion watts per hour, the scale of that electricity consumption is tracked by TWh.
The Bitcoin network consumes roughly 174 TWh, which is roughly in line with the total energy consumption of Egypt and South Africa, according to Cambridge University.
The U. S. currently boasts over a third of the world’s total Bitcoin mining industry, which industry participants claim has made the sector cleaner and more transparent.
According to Compass Mining’s Chief Mining Officer Shanon Squires, “increased Bitcoin mining in the U.S. can be a net positive compared to more opaque jurisdictions like Kazakhstan.” The business offers hosting and operational services for Bitcoin mining.
” The U. S. offers legal protections, industry transparency, and reliable data collection, promoting energy efficiency and environmental responsibility”, he added.
Wolfie Zhao, head of research at , also said that the dynamics of Bitcoin mining are largely unaffected by Trump’s climate policies.
” Bitcoin mining’s energy consumption is fundamentally driven by market forces—mainly electricity costs and profitability”, Zhao told . ” They inherently gravitate toward cheap energy, which increasingly includes renewables”.
However, if the United States is able to capture a larger portion of the Bitcoin mining market as Trump intends, the absence of legal protections under President Trump could lead to a more opaque mining industry that is set to be subject to fewer disclosure obligations than ever.
In 2022, Senator Edward Markey (D-MA ) proposed a bill , that sought to require miners who are consuming over 5 megawatts of electricity to disclose energy sources. According to experts, the political will for similar initiatives will simply not exist for the next four years.
” Biden even tried to put a mining tax in his budget”, said de Vries. That never materialized, but we don’t even need to anticipate that effort from Trump.
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