Law Decoded: The difference between New York City and New York State, April 25-May 2

cointelegraph.com:

Last week, New York dominated crypto media headlines in very different ways. In New York State, the local Assembly voted in favor of the bill that would ban for two years any new mining operations that rely on proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanisms and use fossil fuel-generated energy. 

A temporary moratorium, which could be extended after the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation provides its assessments of the industry’s carbon footprint, marks the first major legislative attack on PoW mining on environmental grounds in the United States. The push mobilized the community — after digital asset advocacy groups rang the alarm on Twitter. Then, proponents of the ban had to endure three hours of a heated debate to narrowly pass the draft. There’s hope for an even tighter fight in the NY State Senate.

Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Eric Adams set an example of supporting innovation as he hit out at his state’s BitLicense regime during an interview at the Crypto and Digital Assets Summit in London. As a recently elected politician who's claimed to take his three paychecks in Bitcoin (BTC), Adams called the license — the only one at the state level — a “high barrier” and urged legislators if not to think outside the box, then to at least not destroy the box itself.

Another instance of a reasonable approach to regulation was exemplified by New York State Senator Kevin Thomas, who has introduced a bill to define, penalize and criminalize fraud specifically targeting developers and projects that intend to dupe crypto investors. The amendment would impose rug pull charges on developers that sell “more than 10% of such tokens within five years from the date of last sale of such tokens.”

While some consider New York