Thursday, May 4th 2023
US Government Targeting Crypto Miners With Proposed Energy Bill Tax
The US Government is considering new plans that will attempt to curb the after effects of cryptocurrency mining. The White House revealed details about its proposed "DAME Tax" scheme on Tuesday of this week - the Digital Asset Mining Energy excise tax is under consideration for this year's US Budget. The government wants to address the impact that cryptomining has on the US economy as well as the environment, alongside numerous other national challenges. Companies engaged in the extraction of cryptocurrencies could be charged extra for the running of computer equipment (starting in early 2024). A White House spokesperson states: "after a phase-in period, firms would face a tax equal to 30 percent of the cost of the electricity they use in cryptomining."
American crypto companies are facing a 10 percent taxation of their energy bill for 2024, that will then increase to 20 percent in 2025, and the maximum tax rate will hit a high of 30 percent in 2026. The White House number crunching team reckons that $3.5 billion could be generated by the proposed DAME excise tax. The new rules would represent a radical change for large scale cryptomining efforts: "Currently, cryptomining firms do not have to pay for the full cost they impose on others, in the form of local environmental pollution, higher energy prices, and the impacts of increased greenhouse gas emissions on the climate. The DAME tax encourages firms to start taking better account of the harms they impose on society," reads a White House statement." The government's investigation has determined that the domestic cryptomining industry is close to consuming more electricity than the entire nation's residential lighting system. US lawmakers last year calculated that some of the larger digital asset mining firms are capable of using more energy than nearly all of the residential population based in Houston, TX.
Sources:
White House Statement, The Register, Guardian UK
American crypto companies are facing a 10 percent taxation of their energy bill for 2024, that will then increase to 20 percent in 2025, and the maximum tax rate will hit a high of 30 percent in 2026. The White House number crunching team reckons that $3.5 billion could be generated by the proposed DAME excise tax. The new rules would represent a radical change for large scale cryptomining efforts: "Currently, cryptomining firms do not have to pay for the full cost they impose on others, in the form of local environmental pollution, higher energy prices, and the impacts of increased greenhouse gas emissions on the climate. The DAME tax encourages firms to start taking better account of the harms they impose on society," reads a White House statement." The government's investigation has determined that the domestic cryptomining industry is close to consuming more electricity than the entire nation's residential lighting system. US lawmakers last year calculated that some of the larger digital asset mining firms are capable of using more energy than nearly all of the residential population based in Houston, TX.
103 Comments on US Government Targeting Crypto Miners With Proposed Energy Bill Tax
Anyway, this is a tax that will rise to 30% on the electricity used for crypto mining. At current electricity rates in kWh (see link below), commercial and industrial rates for electricity are significantly lower than those paid by residential customers. Even with a 30% tax on commercial rates, the cost per kWh would still be less than the residential rates in most states. Rates do vary significantly from state to state, with the lower cost states having rates less than half the rate of other states.
www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a
Please, get with the news and current situation. Interest rates are rising, Fed is destroying money and performing quantitative tightening. And its not even "recent" news, its been going on for all of 2022 and will continue to happen in 2023. Posting 2-year-old complaints about the economy isn't helpful and is a painful miscalculation.
The US Government / Fed is acting more like Joker this past year. Literally wiping out huge portions of money and causing M2 (our measurement of money) to decline at its fastest rate since the Great Depression.
gifdb.com/gif/burning-money-the-joker-flaming-stacks-pyramid-q6375ntaoul5j514.html
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That's the thing about the 1930s. We discovered that it was useful to both print money (during times of great financial stress), and incinerate money (during times of inflation). Having humans in the loop to control the money supply is useful. BTC (limited printing), DOGEcoin (unlimited printing), and other coins make a fundamental mistake about how modern currencies work (ie: by bankers arguing about the growth and/or decline of money supply), and ultimately lead to the boom/bust behavior that was common the 1800s-era silver/gold standard age where money couldn't be manipulated.Boob-tube enjoyers didn't transfer $Billions of money to FTX last year, which seems to have been the only "useful" thing cryptocoins have accomplished thus far.
IE: We spend $Billions in electricity, only for our hard earned money to fly overseas into shady "banks" in the Bahamas, and disappear into nothingness. What exactly are cryptocoins doing that's beneficial to our country or society?
EDIT: And lol at complaining about refrigeration. Literally the technology that allows our milk to travel from Farms in Iowa across the country without the milk spoiling, and you're calling that a waste of electricity? These other techs are at worst, entertainment. But Cryptocoin costs real resources to mine, and seems to have only been used to rugpull / steal money from others so far without any actual benefits to our society. The few times cryptocoins were tried to be used as payment processors (see Steam's attempted rollout of BTC), it failed almost immediately.
All the laws protecting your rights are there because the government exists.
Government funded grants to universities/military have been the main factor in driving US tech & biotech information.
All Crypto has managed to do is burn a bunch of fossil fuel in the name of get-rich-quick speculative market schemes.
It's not like there's no life without social media. I know people born after 2000 kind of think so, but still... I'm not even registered on anything other than Facebook, and even there, I haven't read or added a single post in years. Fear of missing out is all psychological - there's no real "missing out".
Edit: typo
The state of Californication now produces insulin, but it's the least they could do considering they tax everything.
Speaking of which, from the sound of things, you're awfully close to retirement, or retired already. Awfully close to, or already taking advantage of the very popular government programs of Social Security and Medicare.The government was the driver of microchips & super computers in the space race era. However, the government is even more involved in medical technology, specifically biotech. Public funding in research universities is where we get a huge amount of new medicine and medical technology. All sorts of vaccines and anti-viral drugs come out of publicly funded research facilities and universities.
Let's stay on topic though. Here we're talking about crypto, it's a product simply burns fossil fuels to fuel a speculative market worth nothing. The burden is the crypto.
It's too common for crypto mining to simply be done on the side, with already existing hardware - or stolen power
Like a... tax bracket, or some other magical thing they dont already have, instead of flat rates.
www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/05/03/first-republic-bailouts-democracy
www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/business/first-republic-bank-jpmorgan.html
With that you could argue the only thing that vanished was the banks' equity though with the bank's being taken over by their larger peers I'm not sure even that'd apply.
The comparison of crypto mining to companies producing services and useful products, which is almost implied by some colleagues, is...well, I don't know, a statement of an interested party. Of course, one can argue about whether and how much some products are useful and necessary, and whether they are not produced and offered in excess in some rich markets for maximum profit and thus, after some of them are not sold, thrown away after their expiration date. We know how many car parks with unsold cars occupy large areas. We know how purchased and never used items are found in storages and garages.
Ps. People are being trained as fighting dogs. To buy in excess is not necessarily of their own volition. But they are unable to realize it.
That those things exist is a result of what amounts to corruption not the fundamental inability of a given govt's ability to tax the rich.That just means that however good of a musician they might be they're kinda crappy as a person.
The UK's, and EU's in general, taxes are relatively high compared to the US but you also get more for your money to even after years of the conservative factions trying to hamstring and sabotage the public safety nets.The govt's job has nothing to do with producing anything or turning a profit.
Their job is to keep things running and use taxation to provide for services or roads or military protection, etc. There is plenty of history of on pre-modern govt's and in general they ranged from crappy to straight up horrible.
If you want to compare them to a business they're what amounts to the management not the workers, but that is just a analogy.
As George Harrison noted in his song taxman, the British government was taking 50% of his earnings, so he left and Ringo Starr and Keith Richards. The Beatles at some point were looking into buying an entire Greek island for themselves.
Billionaires can ALWAYS relocate somewhere else, Elon Musk could buy a house (or island) in another country and be out of the USA anytime he wants. Other countries WANT their money and maybe even a lot less of it.