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The United States Senate has blocked the Ratepayer Protection Act, falling just three votes short of the sixty needed to advance. The bill would have shielded everyday Americans from electricity cost increases driven by data center expansion. With AI infrastructure demand pushing consumption to roughly six percent of national grid capacity, that protection is now off the table.
On a related front, energy providers are sounding alarms about the pressure AI is placing on power grids. Data centers are consuming roughly forty percent more energy than originally projected, and that gap is widening as electric vehicles and heat pumps add further strain. The question is no longer whether the grid can keep up, but who pays when it can't.
Meanwhile, a significant shift is underway in financial markets. OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, have filed a joint notice under the SEC's new Innovation Exemption to launch around-the-clock tokenized stock trading. The filing covers more than sixty companies, including Nvidia and SpaceX, paired with stablecoins, blurring the line between traditional equities and crypto infrastructure.
Those are the stories moving the needle today. Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
