US Government Targeting Crypto Miners With Proposed Energy Bill Tax

[dalekdukesboy]

lol it's not the government who is trying or needing to make money in this scenario.

Exactly, you need not go any further in this reply than to say this...Why? Because the government produces nothing, makes nothing, and doesn’t even produce a penny in revenue (short of physically printing bills and causing inflation ultimately) so the government is far more useless and greedy than any crypto-miner the planet has ever seen, period.

 

[Melted Rabbit]

Oh the horror, making people pay for their impact on society.

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.

Electric Power Monthly - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

www.eia.gov

 

[dragontamer5788]

Exactly, you need not go any further in this reply than to say this...Why? Because the government produces nothing, makes nothing, and doesn’t even produce a penny in revenue (short of physically printing bills and causing inflation ultimately) so the government is far more useless and greedy than any crypto-miner the planet has ever seen, period.

I like how the US Government has been actively destroying money for the last year, to the point where we're having multiple regional scale-banks collapse, and people still think that the US Government is still in QE stance.

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.

Burning Money The Joker Flaming Stacks Pyramid GIF | GIFDB.com

Download Burning Money The Joker Flaming Stacks Pyramid GIF for free. 10000+ high-quality GIFs and other animated GIFs for Free on GifDB.

gifdb.com

-----------

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.

Guess what? Boob-tube enjoyers also use more energy.

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.

 

[EatingDirt]

That's the only thing our government knows how to do is tax or throw money at a problem. Our country is doomed

My friend, that's kind of how government works. They make laws, they tax things and they pay for things.

Neat idea, however I fundamentally disagree with targeting something for a higher tax just because we dont like it. This is a fundamentally poor decision that can and will be easily abused.

The executive branch isnt making this law. They've PROPOSED it as part of the new budget. That just means theyve put it in a memo and stuck it to the bill with a pretty please.


Yes there is.

Nuclear.

It already exists. I can be scaled up and down very quickly, and with greater efficiency, then gas.

Taxing is the most fundamental way for a government to discourage the use of a product without banning the product itself.

Exactly, you need not go any further in this reply than to say this...Why? Because the government produces nothing, makes nothing, and doesn’t even produce a penny in revenue (short of physically printing bills and causing inflation ultimately) so the government is far more useless and greedy than any crypto-miner the planet has ever seen, period.

This is libertarian speak for "I don't know how the government works".

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.

 

[AusWolf]

I do not agree as a user of social networks with still relatively free access to have to pay for their tax increase. While taxing crypto "mining" doesn't concern me. It's even good, although it would be even better for planet Earth, crypto to be banned and criminalized.

If I had to pay for Facebook, I just wouldn't use it. Simple. The only thing I would miss is Messenger, but I'm sure I could convince my friends to use Viber or WhatsApp instead.

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

 

[dalekdukesboy]

My friend, that's kind of how government works. They make laws, they tax things and they pay for things.

Taxing is the most fundamental way for a government to discourage the use of a product without banning the product itself.

This is libertarian speak for "I don't know how the government works".

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.

I’ve only been involved in politics since I was watching David Brinkley in the 80’s. Also, I’m a Conservative, so you are totally wrong.

 

[Denver]

My friend, that's kind of how government works. They make laws, they tax things and they pay for things.

Taxing is the most fundamental way for a government to discourage the use of a product without banning the product itself.

This is libertarian speak for "I don't know how the government works".

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.

I would say that this is half true, At what point were AMD, intel, Nvidia, Meta, Amazon, Apple etc...(base of the modern world) founded by government funds? Yes, the government has its role... But the balance between being an equalizing/regulating factor in society and being a burden on companies is a delicate one.

 

[80251]

It's literally in the article. Reeding iz hrd.

View attachment 294497

Guess what? Boob-tube enjoyers also use more energy.

You still havent described how mining crypto is sedition. Maybe come back with an argument that wouldnt embarrass a NFT bro next time.

Refrigeration eh? The food industry (restaurants, producers, retailers) RELIES on refrigeration to work. Refrigeration is in no way a luxury anymore.

Exactly, you need not go any further in this reply than to say this...Why? Because the government produces nothing, makes nothing, and doesn’t even produce a penny in revenue (short of physically printing bills and causing inflation ultimately) so the government is far more useless and greedy than any crypto-miner the planet has ever seen, period.

It used to be the USPS supported itself -- it didn't need taxpayer money because it provided a service and had no competition for said service.

The state of Californication now produces insulin, but it's the least they could do considering they tax everything.

 

[Vagotron Prime]

Here's some food for thought. Cumulatively, Americans drove 3.2 trillion miles in 2022. On average, EV's consume 0.34kWh per mile. This means that moving to EV's has an end goal of 1.088 trillion kWh of consumption, not accounting for population increase/decrease. If crypto mining is such a burden to the grid at 50 billion+ kWh, I can't fathom what a 20x load from EV's would look like. Looks like special EV taxes will begin to take effect once adoption rates increase if taxes are the method to handle higher electrical consumption. I for one don't mine crypto, but I also thought that now that ETH went proof of stake that mining had essentially fizzled to a fraction of its consumption in 2021.

 

[EatingDirt]

I’ve only been involved in politics since I was watching David Brinkley in the 80’s. Also, I’m a Conservative, so you are totally wrong.

What a strange reply to just the first line out of 4. I don't care if you're a conservative or libertarian, what you said was nonsense and I clarified why right after with 3 other lines listing just a few of the things government is actually useful for.

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.

I would say that this is half true, At what point were AMD, intel, Nvidia, Meta, Amazon, Apple etc...(base of the modern world) founded by government funds? Yes, the government has its role... But the balance between being an equalizing/regulating factor in society and being a burden on companies is a delicate one.

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.

 

[hat]

Am I the only one that smells something fishy here? Crypto is already heavily taxed as an asset. This already includes miners. A very basic example would be, you mined one bitcoin while its value was $10,000. You then sell this bitcoin while its value is $20,000. With a 30% tax, you would need to pay 30% of your profit, or $3000 for that sale. Now they're adding additional taxes to the energy cost, too? It sounds to me like the same old story of the government trying to tax the living hell out of everything. If it wasn't crypto, it would be something else. This isn't the government going after those "damn dirty miners", it's the government trying to get paid. Bonus points for making it even more difficult to use something other than the government sponsored Dollar as a currency.

 

[Mussels]

Hows this gunna work, if they cant prove who's using the power for what?

It's too common for crypto mining to simply be done on the side, with already existing hardware - or stolen power

 

[64K]

Now they're adding additional taxes to the energy cost, too? It sounds to me like the same old story of the government trying to tax the living hell out of everything. If it wasn't crypto, it would be something else.

The US government did something similar with cigarettes. They couldn't easily make them illegal so instead they taxed the hell out of them. It worked. Cigarette smoking among adults is down to 12.5% of the population.

Hows this gunna work, if they cant prove who's using the power for what?

It's too common for crypto mining to simply be done on the side, with already existing hardware - or stolen power

I wonder if people running multiple PCs for Folding and Crunching 24/7 will get the tax too. It strikes me as callous for the government to punish people who are trying to aid society and not doing it for profit.

 

[R0H1T]

Better late than never.

And better 30% tax than 0%, but I'm not convinced that 30% is the appropriate tax for this.

How about taxing (fairly) those serial dodgers as well ~ millionaires & especially billionaires? Oh wait they fund both parties so wouldn't happen in a trillion years

The US government did something similar with cigarettes. They couldn't easily make them illegal so instead they taxed the hell out of them. It worked. Cigarette smoking among adults is down to 12.5% of the population.

It's all a scam if the US govt were really serious about environment & indeed taxes they wouldn't let the millionaires, billionaires & now trillionaire corporations get way with so much.

 

[Mussels]

The US government did something similar with cigarettes. They couldn't easily make them illegal so instead they taxed the hell out of them. It worked. Cigarette smoking among adults is down to 12.5% of the population.



I wonder if people running multiple PCs for Folding and Crunching 24/7 will get the tax too. It strikes me as callous for the government to punish people who are trying to aid society and not doing it for profit.

The only way it makes sense, is to tax energy usage past certain thresholds, period - and then offer reductions to those using it for various purposes (like they already do) - like a hospital shouldnt pay extra, etc.


Like a... tax bracket, or some other magical thing they dont already have, instead of flat rates.

 

[R0H1T]

I like how the US Government has been actively destroying money for the last year, to the point where we're having multiple regional scale-banks collapse, and people still think that the US Government is still in QE stance.

Not from the US but how do you explain the Fed (FDIC?) essentially backstopping all deposits in those large banks? Read somewhere that with First Republic they would already have to foot 13 billion dollars or so & 23(?) billion overall this year!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/05/03/first-republic-bailouts-democracy

First Republic Bank Is Seized by Regulators and Sold to JPMorgan Chase (Published 2023)

As part of the deal, 84 First Republic branches in eight states reopened as JPMorgan branches on Monday.

www.nytimes.com

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.

 

[R-T-B]

I would like them to tax websites that use mining ads (regardless if deliberately or not).
Those get used by MUCH higher number of users and could have much higher power bill impact.

Would be nearly impossible to enforce, sadly.

Of course, they burn gas and coal to generate electricity and it's the fault of those who buy it lol

It's bad to waste it, yes.

Honestly they have the ability to backtrace where these people are sucking energy into why not just arrest them for sedition

Because sedition it is not? If we had sedition for just being an asshole half this country would be in jail.

Because the government produces nothing

I like a stable society, kthx.

Also, I’m a Conservative, so you are totally wrong.

That's a pretty amazing retort.

It used to be the USPS supported itself

It still by and large supports itself, despite numerous conservative bills designed to cripple it into oblivion.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

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.

I agree .
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.

 

[AusWolf]

I agree .
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.

Not to mention if a consumer buys a product that he/she doesn't need, that's on them, not the company that sells it.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Not to mention if a consumer buys a product that he/she doesn't need, that's on them, not the company that sells it.

Not quite, obviously, but the impact of training consumers from infancy to the Western(not only US) model and supporting the training throughout their lives with advertising messages and other media ploys towards over-purchasing is another topic and perhaps even another forum.
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.

 

[jigar2speed]

How about -10% tax to people who have solar panel, they are assisting in maintaining grid power right ?

 

[mak1skav]

Thank God they didn't put a tax on the tea, you guys would have to fight once again for your independence.

 

[80251]

I don't know if taxing multi-millionaires and billionaires works. Practically all the Beatles and Rolling Stones left the UK because of excessive taxation.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

I think it's trolling to compare crypto to companies producing useful products and services. Society does not profit from crypto mining, only loses. With crypto in the beginning, and probably still, it's basically paying for crimes. I had read somewhere that paid content on the dark web is paid for with crypto. Including all the nasties you can think of. Yes, they could obviously be paid with regular currencies, but seeking, and some time ago probably finding, increased anonymity, this incentivizes crime. So crypto is a criminal code, from all normal people's points of view. Anyone who doesn't call crypto a crime is almost certainly a criminal himself.

 

[phubar]

I don't know if taxing multi-millionaires and billionaires works.

Of course it works. They wouldn't be lobbying for loopholes and and trying to hide funds in tax havens if it didn't.

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.

Practically all the Beatles and Rolling Stones left the UK because of excessive taxation.

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.

Because the government produces nothing, makes nothing, and doesn’t even produce a penny in revenue

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.