Montana State Senate Passes New Bill To Protect Crypto Miner’s Rights

With the crypto industry evolving, several entities still have different views on the ecosystem. While some believe it’s all a scam, some see the great potential and believe the industry has a bright future. 

In today’s news, the western state of Montana is part of the few that believe in the latter. On Thursday, the region passed a new bill aimed at the protection rights of cryptocurrency miners. 

Crypto Miners To Recieve Freedom

The bill which favors crypto miners comes at a time when crypto traders are at possible risk of discrimination. In the new bill, the Montana state senate proposed that crypto miners should be given the “right to mine digital assets.” 

Besides that, the senate also proposed that the bill would forbid any form of discrimination of crypto miners over electricity rates charged as well as protect the act of home mining. Furthermore, the bill is also aimed at neutralizing the local government’s power to restrict at-home mining or to use zoning laws to close active operations of crypto mining.

Overall, the proposed bill is said to also favor Missoula’s recently proposed bill passed in 2020. The bill suggested all bitcoin miners in the country purchase or build renewable energy assets parallel to the amount of energy they consume. 

So far, the Montana bill has only received 37 votes in its favor and about 13 against it. Should the bill get passed by the House of Representatives, it would have to move on to the final stage which is to get confirmed into law after receiving a signature from Governor Greg Gianforte.

Following the bill’s approval by the House, the law which implies an additional tax to the use of cryptocurrency as a payment method will be terminated. In addition, digital assets such as crypto as well as nonfungible tokens (NFTs) will be marked as “personal property” just as other financial products like bonds and stocks. 

Speaking of crypto miners, Montana state isn’t the only region acting in their favor. Last week, the Mississippi senate also passed a bill with similar intent. The bill permitted the installation of crypto-mining equipment in various zones without discrimination. 

Increasing Interest In Bitcoin

The cryptocurrency industry has had significant growth over the past years attracting major firms outside of the industry. Earlier this year in January, Strike, a leading digital wallet built on the lightning network launched a pilot integration with POS giant, Clover in order to allow merchants to accept Bitcoin payments through the lightning network. 

Veering back to crypto miners, on May 10, 2022, the parliament of Norway voted against a proposed ban on Bitcoin mining in the region. A communist party in Norway called the Red Party initially recommended the plan to restrict Bitcoin mining activities. 

While the interest and adoption of Bitcoin have only continued to increase, the asset has so far demonstrated composure after its significant plummet from its all-time high of $69,000 seen in November 2021.

At the time of writing, BTC is currently gearing for a bullish trend with a trading price of $23,887 up by 1% in the last 24 hours after a slight retracement from yesterday.

Featured image from Unsplash, Chart from TradingView