Bill protecting Bitcoin mining rights passes in Arkansas Senate and House
A bill seeking to regulate Bitcoin mining in the state of Arkansas has passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and now moves to the governor’s office for approval.
According to the bill, the Arkansas Data Centers Act of 2023 aims to regulate the Bitcoin mining industry in the US state, create guidelines for miners and protect them from discriminatory regulations and taxes.
Arkansas state lawmakers quickly passed the bill after it was proposed March 30 by Sen. Joshua Bryant, the law’s status page shows. The document recognizes “that data centers create jobs, pay taxes and provide general economic value to local communities.”
According to the approved bill, a digital asset miner is “required to pay applicable taxes and government fees in acceptable forms of currency, and operate in a manner that does not cause stress on an electric public utility’s production capacity or transmission network.”
According to the legislation, crypto miners will also have the same rights as data centers. The bill outlines that Arkansas’ government should not “impose a different requirement for a digital asset mining operation than applies to any requirement for a data center.”
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Arkansas’ move follows a similar initiative in the state of Montana. In late March, the Montana Senate passed a bill designed to protect crypto miners operating in the state. The bill intends to protect miners from taxes on digital assets used for payments and to eliminate energy prices that discriminate against home cryptominers and digital assets.
The state of Texas stands in a different direction. On April 4, the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce passed legislation that would largely remove incentives for miners operating under the state’s crypto-friendly regulatory environment, Cointelegraph reported.
An even stronger move came from New York last November, when Governor Kathy Hochul signed the proof-of-work (PoW) mining moratorium into law, banning crypto mining in the state for two years. At the federal level, crypto miners in the United States may eventually be subject to a 30% tax on electricity costs under a budget proposal introduced on March 9 by President Joe Biden aimed at “reducing mining activity.”
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