According to court documents filed Friday, the Energy Information Administration is dropping its emergency survey of bitcoin miners.
The move comes after the Texas Blockchain Council and Riot Platforms, alongside the Chamber of Digital Commerce and the National Civil Liberties Alliance, were granted a temporary restraining order in the case.
“If the EIA seeks to survey cryptocurrency miners in the future, the EIA must undergo the proper notice and comment procedure mandated by law, ensuring public input on the survey’s scope before any re-issuance,” the Chamber of Digital Commerce said in a statement.
Read more: Texas Blockchain Council says it has a ‘strong legal case’ in mining survey suit
Earlier this week, the president of the Texas Blockchain Council told Blockworks that he was “confident” about the Council’s case against the Department of Energy and the EIA.
In court documents, the EIA said it would “destroy any information it has already received” in response to the survey sent out to bitcoin miners across the US.
Additionally, the EIA will publish a Federal Register notice of the proposed collection of information, which will replace the emergency notice issued in early February.
Read more: Standing united means the crypto industry wins
The complaint, filed in Texas last week, argued that Riot and other miners would be “immediately and irreparably harmed by being forced to divulge confidential, sensitive and proprietary information to the EIA.”
The survey notice was sent out at the end of January, and required miners to “respond with details related to their energy use.”
The Office of Management and Budget approved the survey request on Jan. 26, saying at the time it recognized “that this emergency collection is experimental and provisional with the understood intention that EIA wants to build to a new standard collection.”
The survey was pursued after parts of the US faced a brutal winter.
A spokesperson for the EIA told Blockworks in early Feb that “given the emerging and rapidly changing nature of this issue and because EIA cannot quantitatively assess the likelihood of public harm, EIA felt a sense of urgency to generate credible data that would provide insight into this unfolding issue.”
The EIA and Texas Blockchain Council didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Don’t miss the next big story – join our free daily newsletter.
Source: https://blockworks.co/news/eia-drops-bitcoin-miner-survey