Bills related to cryptomining that made it through the Arkansas Senate were passed out of House committee Tuesday, as the 2024 Arkansas fiscal session draws to a close.
The bills, Senate Bill 78 from Sen. Joshua Bryant (R-Rogers) and SB 79 from Sen. Missy Irvin (R-Mountain View), seek to amend the Arkansas Data Centers Act of 2023, which deregulated the cryptocurrency industry in the state and represented the first state law of its kind in the country.
The amended bills would add regulatory provisions to the act and primarily address three concerns: intrusive levels of noise emanating 24/7 from fans cooling the banks of servers housed at two crypto mines in the state, ties of some mine owners to unfriendly foreign governments such as communist China and possible strains on local water tables caused by mines that use water to cool the servers.
The bills are expected to be heard on the House floor Thursday morning.
Steve Landers Jr. had been scheduled to testify last week on behalf of the industry in House committee before the meeting was pushed back to Tuesday. A longtime central Arkansas car dealer, Landers is a cryptocurrency advocate, a crypto-mine owner and a member of the Arkansas Blockchain Council, which seeks to disassociate the industry from “bad actors.”
“These bills give us a framework to make sure the people doing the crypto-mining are following the rules and guidelines,” he said. “The reality is, there are one or two operators who really are in question and causing the bulk of the issues. The rest of us are just trying to quietly go about our jobs of securing the network.
“There are bad actors in any industry. This will help minimize that and get operators in line or get ’em out.”
Landers and the council want to shine a light on cryptocurrency, making it less intimidating and more accessible and explain “how the blockchain works and what Bitcoin [and other cryptocurrencies] is and what it is not.”
“We want to make it so that every person who wants to be involved in cryptocurrency can do so,” he said. “We’re going to try and bring mining to everyone who wants to participate.”
Cryptomines are large banks of computers that run continuously as they process cryptocurrency transactions. Entering the industry can prove expensive and require a great deal of technical ability, so Landers wants to help make individual server ownership opportunities within already established mines available to the general public. These individual miners could then derive income from transactions processed on their servers.
Landers also wants to introduce cryptocurrency education to Arkansas schools and is in talks with two high schools and two colleges in the state about introducing curriculum related to cryptocurrency and the blockchain. Crypto is the wave of the future and heading toward greater adoption and acceptance, he said, and Arkansas could get ahead of the curve by equipping its students to know how the industry works.
“The blockchain is not just crypto,” he said. “It is used for other things like securing elections and shipping manifests. It has so many uses as a means to secure processes. That’s where a lot of its value lies.”
Landers said he wants to see Arkansas set itself apart through crypto. Grant money is available to fund the addition of a crypto curriculum, he added. He said he hopes to see it in place by the end of the year.
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