House commerce subcommittee approves amendments limiting local restrictions on digital-asset mining

A House Commerce and Consumer Affairs subcommittee on digital assets voted to advance amended bill language that narrows local governments’ ability to set special restrictions on digital-asset mining and removes a provision about private cryptographic keys.

The amendment sponsor, Representative John Ammon, said the revised language removes the private-key provisions and several definitions and narrows the parts of the bill that would preempt municipal action. “We decided that it was best to just remove that from the bill instead of bicker over it,” Ammon said during debate.

Members described the remaining provisions as focused on equal treatment and on limiting special, targeted rules for digital-asset miners. Under the amended text discussed in committee, “No state or local government agency or subdivision thereof shall set a specific limit on sound decibels generated from noise, including digital asset mining, other than the limits set by the political subdivision and…