Bitcoin Forum

I speculated about this before but I was called an antagonizer and a fud spreader. However, it is here. The Biden administration is pushing out bitcoin mining by making it more difficult to make profit through raising their taxes. They cannot do a blanket ban similar to the Chinese way because America's government structure is less centralized than China's government structure.

On account of this, I speculate that there is a chance that illegal mining and stealing of electrcity might rise in America. Is there a chance that American gangs and cartels might be interested in mining internet money?

https://i.ibb.co/d55NHfp/09-E93876-2-ADB-4840-BDD7-F50741-AFC327.jpg

United States crypto miners could eventually be subject to a 30% tax on electricity costs under a budget proposal by President Joe Biden aimed to “reduce mining activity.”

Read in full https://cointelegraph.com/news/biden-budget-proposes-30-tax-on-crypto-mining-electricity-usage

I don't even understand how that would work. I mean it could only be used on mining companies, not individuals, and only mining companies that are paying for electricity on-grid. Though I suppose mining companies are probably the vast majority of the mining being done in the US these days.

Also it just completely misunderstands the entire role of Bitcoin mining, though that's not surprising considering most people think mining just wastes electricity. Sad to see policy proposals based on misinformation though. The point would be to basically punish what govt sees as a bad use of energy, but of course bitcoin mining is enormously beneficial to society on its own (not even counting the fact that its beneficial to bitcoin which itself is enormously beneficial to society). If bitcoin mining is gonna be taxes why isn't all electrical usage taxed 30%? Makes no sense to single out a specific industry for its electrical use. That's just horrendous policy.

Govt is going the wrong way with Bitcoin just due to lack of knowledge and misinformation.

From 10% to 30%. A huge ass jump that I don't think there's any reason for mining companies to stay in the United States. What's probably going to be left is the home miners who may or may not declare their mining operations.

Again and again it's about environmental harms, the answer about Bitcoin mining cause environmental harms can be found here https://bitcoincleanup.com/


There's a chance the old miner will mine in illegal without telling to the government, but electricity in America isn't cheap, so they might consider to move to other countries even if they have a family or already familiar with the other countries with cheaper electricity and not strict government.

For small miners it may be, but any major mining company is going to move.


It won't.


This.

A small increase in taxes could be assumed, because leaving the country also has a cost, but I think the increase is so great that they would consider moving to a country with low taxes. Besides, the cost of leaving is one-off, while the tax payments are constant, so they will amortise the move quickly.

I remembered they revealed their intention to do this two years ago if I am not wrong. There are some states in the USA. months ago announced that they did not plan to ban cryptocurrency mining entirely, they only want to control it and get tax from it.

The fact is in the USA. that proposal won't easily to be passed. We know that in the USA. Congress, there are increasing Senators support Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. The number of such Senators increases with time that is a good signal for this industry.

I really believe that there will be no completely ban on Bitcoin or cryptocurrency.

This part is completely a shit show but we know it for years, they failed to accept and say a fact.

Anyone want to discover fact, check in Bitcoin Mining Council's Q4 2022 report (https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/BMC-Q4-2022-Presentation.pdf) and BitcoinCleanUp's Bitcoin is already using clean energy (https://bitcoincleanup.com/)

It's a good thing considering how US regime has been anti-Bitcoin and anti-freedom. Remember MARA pool? We know they will continue pressuring anything Bitcoin related (including mining, development, exchanges, ...) to go against Bitcoin principles, censor transactions, even attack Bitcoin. If hashrate decreases inside United States, that's an excellent thing for Bitcoin's future and security.

True but Chinese government also didn't wake up some day deciding to outright ban bitcoin mining. They have been putting more and more restrictions on it over the years at least ever sine 2013.

It depends on the scale of the mining the individual is doing. It is actually very easy to detect the home miners considering their electricity usage is way beyond the average.

Besides laws like this is usually auto enforced! Meaning the individual miner hearing such a law would stop on their own willingly or end up paying the tax fearing jail time.

What country do you guys expect to become the new mining hub?
This is a list^[1] which shows top countries for mining by country after United States:

Kazakhstan: 18.1%
Russia: 11.23%
Canada: 9.55%
Ireland: 4.68%
Malaysia: 4.58%
Germany: 4.48%
Iran: 3.1%

Russia would not not be a choice destination for many now, but there are still many options. Maybe growth of bitcoin mining in Africa.

The article highlights off-grid electricity as well meaning those miners would fall under the reach of the tax increase, especially if they have been paying previous taxes. pooya87 also made a good point that no one would want to mistakenly evade taxes and risk going to jail.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/bitcoin-mining-by-country

- Jay -

The governments have nothing to look after environmental issues and they only put forward these excuses just to gain money through these tax implementations but 30% on mining operations is really high.They are directly targeting them with these manners but most of them will relocate to other favourable place where they won't have to pay off such high taxes meaning another loss for Biden government.

And it seems that Biden and his administration are trying to get rid of those miners but that huge tax toll on their shoulders and it really doesn't sound good as it affected the market very bad, now the price of bitcoin is below $20k when this news was released and everyone had it's own interpretation.

And I guess there's no other option, maybe shift to a more friendly countries to be able to continue mining.

These two are wrong examples, they just grabbed data and forgot to mention what Cambridge says, those percentages are most likely because of datacenter IPs through which traffic is routed, not that the mining happens there.

But not only that, there is another problem, assuming the US has 1/3 and 1 million mining gears.
Even considering optimal efficiency it's going to be 30 Twh, Kazastan only has 90 Twh total production and already having trouble supplying that, there are basically only two options left with cheap and enough spare electricity to replace the US. One is Canada and the other is Russia. Since obviously the second one is a no-go zone, not for US business at least, we're left with miners migrating from the US to Canada, pretty simple in terms of logistics but that would obviously lead to even more centralization of hash power.


Says the guy who wants to ban ordinals transactions, oh, the irony!

In England, you can get a grant towards the cost of electricity used in heating your house. If you use mining rigs to heat your home, will it be eligible for a grant?
Electricity is far to valuable to waste on pushing cars around, especially as the current EVs are massively damaging to the environment, and force up the cost of home heating and industial use of electricity. It would be far better if the 30% tax was imposed on EVs when more energy efficient ICE vehicles could be used.

There would be consequences for sure however we don't know if the sanctions will come to effect that aggressively. In addition, America will have to segregate the unit rate for every state and county based on consumption. They will have to create a cost chart based on the unit consumption. Let us say that the average household is consuming around the 30 units, then electricity board could set that if anything goes above 30 unit then that would be commercial. While mining can eat up even more electricity then they could keep different rates for let us say anything that goes above 100 units.

The real question is whether they are going to pay that much money. Simply no, because it won't be profitable at all.


So it still need approval. The office knows if they implement such strict window for taxation then eventually miners will shift to crypto friendly nations, where taxes are low or free of charge. They will loos fair amount of business soon.

Well the news says "tax" on it, therefore it will be blocked by Republicans in congress before it even becomes law, because they never like tax increases. Not even for something so ridiculed as cryptocurrency. It's one of the tenants of their political philosophy.

No, there was already a discussion on it on this forum a few weeks ago.
You're eligible if you reduce the electricity consumption, a bitcoin miner will just act like any other 3000W heater on the market, produce the same heat for kwh consumed, and the grants will only be for replacing a system with a far more efficient one, like switching from a gas or oil boiler to a heat pump.


Quite funny, Democrat voters own more coins but want more regulations also, Republicans have a lower percentage of coin owners but want fewer regulations and laws. Just went again over the text, quite interesting:


There is no mention of renewables, so if it goes like this if you have a solar panel farm that you use to feed your miners you're still going to have to pay a tax even if it's for personal use and you're not tied to the grid and never have been.
Not going to pass! Never!

I guess India was better at this by straightly imposing a 30% tax on crypto income directly.
So we basically have to pay 30% from our profits on crypto trading to the government.
I know thats a huge cut from our profits but at least we didn't go from 10% to 30% . Lol .
Still, it at least makes crypto trading legal in India (for the time being).

Right and I clearly remember how many times they have used the term ban for bitcoin usage over these years.For the Chinese government anything that's granting you freedom is enemy to them and bitcoin was directly hitting their financial sector but the digital Yuan is also not coping well as their desired CBDC.The China government was putting constant pressure on miners for few years before they come up with direct ban but hashrate was not affected after some time and less China centric so same will be the case with US government.

Most of the Individual miners would automatically shut it down because they are already not making too much and giving out all in kind of taxation would not benefit them a lot so out of fear they would not mine.For those saying they won't catch them who are mining in your house then you might have heard rumours saying NSA also monitoring your daily small activities so don't overlook them  ;D

The government is the head of a country; how can it be said that they lack knowledge and misinformation? Before they want to make any decisions, there is discussion and consultation with specialized advisors. I don't think they are dumber than us, and can become the president of the most powerful country in the world. They know it all but will only find ways to benefit them, they will never accept something unchecked, not in their favor, even jeopardizing their power.

I have previously disagreed with your theories about how illegal BTC miners and electricity theft will be the solution to maintaining decentralization, and I can even less agree that this would ever be the case in the US. It's not some third-class country where you can steal large amounts of electricity and stay off the radar long enough to make a profit.

Gangs and cartels are an even less likely outcome, because firstly they are not intelligent enough to deal with it, and then secondly they would have to steal electricity again or get into trouble when trying to sell mined coins. Drugs, prostitution, weapons, people smuggling and similar criminal activities generate a mountain of money.

Electricity theft to mine Bitcoin for more profitable. I guess there are people doing this just like they steal electricity for their family usage or for other activities. Mining Bitcoin is one of use cases for their stolen electricity.

Again this is like an accusation that Bitcoin is used for Ponzi, for drug market etc. but we can not flip the coin and say the opposite, Bitcoin is responsible for Ponzi scheme, drug or darknet markets.

I have never read any report about percent of Bitcoin miners use stolen electricity to mine it. Any idea?

I find it funny seeing so many people think that this has already become a law already. There's a huge difference between proposal and law. Crazy crypto related proposals are suggested all the time, but very few become laws.

This particular proposal sounds like one of those proposals which will get swept under the rug pretty quickly since US senators stand to lose more thanks to it in the long-term.

Stop jumping to conclusions and think for a second. Just my 2 cents.

I suspect governments are intent on joining forces against bitcoin. What if those miners, after moving to another country and they, are subject to high taxes or other regulations that hurt them? They can't move forever, it's too inconvenient and expensive.
China has banned mining companies and miners from moving to the US and if that continues in the future it will be a disaster for bitocin and miners.

I agree I don't think this will actually be included in the budget when congress writes their budget. Still it just goes to show the level of misinformation around Bitcoin mining when even the President of the US is proposing essentially an attack on Bitcoin mining for environmental reasons, when Bitcoin mining is in fact one of the most important things that will help make the energy infrastructure of the world greener and stronger and more efficient in the coming decades.

It just shows how DESPERATELY we need knowledgeable people educating politicians about Bitcoin and we need politicians willing to be educated on the topic and not just reading and believing negative misinformation headlines. I know crypto companies are trying to educate politicians about the value of Bitcoin, but it doesn't seem like a whole lot is being done to try to educate them on why Bitcoin mining is in fact great for society and the environment (though probably because very few people even understand this in the Bitcoin community).

I just hope there's no ridiculous tyrannical action taken against Bitcoin mining by the US in the coming few years before the benefits of both Bitcoin and mining start to permeate more broadly and especially among politicians.

Questions regarding an outright ban aren't the right question to ask. Biden and the other democrats don't particularly care to ban Bitcoin because they wouldn't want to lose the opportunity to gain tax revenue. If they can curtail Bitcoin growth and simultaneously tax existing mining operations, then they're perfectly content. The Biden administration has proposed regulation efforts before, this isn't anything new. I've long said that Bitcoin bans aren't feasible for most governments, rather creating convoluted regulatory frameworks around the entire crypto space would be effective enough to drive away activity on top of the excessive taxes.

Keep in mind, the proposed tax is only enforceable at the federal level. So it's possible for some of the more liberal states to introduce additional taxes that compound the tax rate the Biden administration is proposing. All this is coming from a crowd that couldn't define "Bitcoin" to begin with.

I don't think the United States will see a problem with electricity theft whatsoever, since I assume those crimes are taken very seriously there and are a felony. If cartels and other organized crime syndicates wanted to profit off Bitcoin mining, it would be more logical for them to move their mining equipment to countries where electricity is cheaper and corruption is higher, so they can keep authorities in their payroll.

On the political side of this news, if Mr.Biden is expecting to benefit the United States this is proposal, he would be wrong, this sounds like something intended to discourage Bitcoin in USA, going along with the development of CBDCs.

us industrial rates (lowest 15, highest3)
lowest (cents)
New Mexico                 5.70 (+30% tax=7.41)
Iowa                           5.89
Idaho                         6.03
North Dakota              6.72
Tennessee                  6.84
Nebraska                   7.00
West Virginia              7.05
Washington                7.07
Oklahoma                  7.15
West North Central     7.33
Mississippi                 7.33
Ohio                         7.35
Texas                        7.37
West South Central    7.38
Wyoming                  7.40

highest(cents)
Rhode Island             20.99
Pacific Noncontiguous   33.35
Hawaii                      39.78


mining in the 34 states not listed will move to: new mexico/iowa/idaho
dont expect anyone to mine in hawaii

I'm not a "tax expert" but I think that is only slightly higher than what is paid elsewhere. The tax on the profit from cryptocurrency trading should be categorized under "Capital Gains tax" and that usually is around 20% in most countries but can go up as high as 30%.

I'm not so sure about that. According to some sources electrical theft is actually huge in United States, for example Pepco (https://secure.pepco.com/MyAccount/CustomerSupport/Pages/EnergyTheftForm.aspx) claims it is third largest form of theft in United States while other statistics suggest that annually about $6 billion is "lost" to theft which is roughly 40 billion kilowatthours. [1 (https://www.smart-energy.com/industry-sectors/energy-grid-management/energy-theft-and-fraud-reduction/)][2 (http://2)]. It is massive and it is staying off the radar.

I have to say this isn't really that much of a big deal considering that it is just tax, and it shouldn't really bother the whole bitcoin world. This is just a sub section of the whole community, we are talking about not all Americans here neither, we are talking about just the miners of America.

When you think about it that way, it isn't that much in the general population of crypto and that is why I wouldn't bet that this would have an impact on bitcoin. Obviously if the market wants to overreact on things, they can, I feel like market keeps on overreacting to many things and this could be one of them and I would understand that, but that's about it, normally it shouldn't be an issue at all.

Although this is just a proposal and has not been approved, it will not affect anything, but if it is approved, it will also significantly affect bitcoin as well as the market. Once they can go up to 30%, they can adjust higher in the future, such as 50%, and most likely other countries will follow the US government, and it will become a serious problem for us. Don't take taxes lightly, they don't want to ban bitcoin anymore because they see the benefit of taxing us.

People have always stolen electricity and there is no doubt that they continue to do so, but the sources you mentioned claim that electricity worth about $96 billion is stolen annually, and only $6 billion of that is in the US. Of course, this is also a large amount, but it seems to me that most of this theft goes to small consumers who use cheap tricks like what was described in Mexico (pequeño diablos or 'little devils.'). Given that there are millions of legal and illegal immigrants from Central and South America living in the US, I have no doubt that they brought with them their own methods of getting free electricity.

Someone who would like to have a serious mining farm in the US and steal electricity would probably be discovered very quickly, because you can't just hide that amount of energy. This is also confirmed by one of your sources where they say literally :

If it's currently a proposal, what is the chance that it will be approved?
Also, I thought the US was going to conduct research on environmental impact of mining and then make decisions. And, once again, I feel like it's fair to look at environmental impact of all big spenders of energy, but not fair to focus on miners specifically. It's fair to tax big spenders of electricity that comes from bad sources, but not fair to tax all big spenders, regardless of their sources of energy. I haven't read the full proposal, but from the article, it seems a bit insensitive and not nuanced enough.

Here, energy taxes get lower once you consume more electricity. We pay (https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontentnl/belastingdienst/zakelijk/overige_belastingen/belastingen_op_milieugrondslag/tarieven_milieubelastingen/tabellen_tarieven_milieubelastingen) €0.12599 per kWh in tax for the first 10,000 kWh, and that gradually drops to €0.00115 when you use more than 10 million kWh per year. Plus 21% GST, of course.
This is why Bitcoin mining has never been much of a thing where I live. It's not competitive.

The real question is what are they trying to accomplish. The source claims this:
If US miners quit, the environmental effects will just move to other countries where they'll fill the gap by buying more miners. The increased price argument is weak: short-term, lower demand will lead to lower prices, but long-term, lower demand will lead to lower production capacity. You could even argue it creates jobs for the local community. I'm curious what "risks" there are for local communities: is mining Bitcoin worse than charging an electric car?

And this clown was supposed to be a crypto friendly president unlike Trump.  8) Trump never liked crypto and he expressed his opinions very clearly but he never tried to rob us like that. This is a direct move to eliminate crypto mining. Who in the right mind would mine crypto in the US now? China banned crypto mining and US is going to put a tax on it which is a ban in disguise. Supporting this guy as a president was a huge mistake and now is the payback time.

That is the saddest thing about media and it really hurts me deep down. You could always title something as good or bad and convince people accordingly, and if enough news people do that, then suddenly one thing could become very good or bad. Lets take this for example, 30% tax proposal right, that is the FACT we have right now.

You can name it "Biden finally accepts crypto by putting 30% tax regulations to legitimize it" and that is taking the fact and stretching the truth to make it look bad, or you can title it "Biden wants to warn people against crypto and put 30% tax on it" type of thing and that would be bad, just name whatever and people who do not know the reality will fall for it.

Yeah its a huge jump and most of them might run away or just paid the tax till new regulation says "BAN ON CRYPTO MINING".  or like you said they might declare non-mining operation and say it datacenter or so.

Kazakhstan is crypto mining friendly but I don't know until when it going to last. Since there is news that says "An individual's income from the sale of digital asset issued by a foreign issuer will be subject to personal income tax at the rate of 10%. The taxable basis will be the positive difference between the sales price and the purchase price of the digital asset." - https://www.mondaq.com/tax-authorities/1290116/changes-in-the-digital-mining-taxation-in-kazakhstans

Yeah that is true. Even in India, there are capital gains divided as short term capital gains and long term capital gains.
Short term are taxed around 15% and long term are taxed around 20%.
Tax on any kind of crypto income are taxed at 30%. The government made this move to decrease crypto usage/trading in India.
Hopefully this changes in future though.

That's true. The larger the operation the harder it gets to hide it, but it still not impossible. In fact one of the biggest theft cases in United States is from those who steal electricity to grow weed (I believe it is with sun lamps underground) which is 2 illegal things at the same time. They do it without getting caught that easily.
We should also consider the small time miners that consume far less amount of electricity compared to a farm that could also hide their electricity theft easier.

That's Crazy I thought!  30% is a damn number for taxes.  I feel like I'm being blackmailed by the government.  This is very burdensome for cryptocurrency mining companies.  This also burdens all crypto transactions or investors who have stored their funds in the form of cryptocurrency assets.  Maybe in future India will be the number 1 country in cryptocurrency world because I have seen there are many people or companies in India who are interested and are developing a decentralized system.  Some of my friends from India said that their country can accept cryptocurrency and they are very excited to learn what cryptocurrency is and how it works.  I don't know if there are Indians here but that is what my friends from India have been telling me.  peace!  ;D

It's funny that there are conspiracy theorists, who still think that Bitcoin was created by the CIA.
If Bitcoin was really created by the CIA, then why would the US government try to punish all BTC miners?
The anti-Bitcoin forces will always find a way to attack Bitcoin. First it was "BTC mining pollutes the environment.", many BTC miners started using green energy, now it's just "We don't like BTC mining, we are going to tax it." We just can't make the anti-Bitcoiners happy. ;D
Anyway, the hashrate will be adjusted and many miners will have to move somewhere else. There will be price turbulence, but we are still in a crypto winter, so who cares... ;D

Maybe you should look at what Trump proposed regarding cryptocurrencies at the very end of his mandate, and Biden suspended all of that when he took office. In addition, Trump could not be good or bad towards BTC miners, because they became a "problem" a little later, or maybe at the time when he encouraged angry mobs to attack government institutions and kill innocent people.

If by any chance you are a US voter, then you will have the opportunity to re-elect Trump, and just for information, this bank that failed a few days ago might not have failed if Trump had not abolished the mandatory checks that existed before. The policy implemented by the US is always more or less the same, the only question is who they appoint as president - someone with dark skin, someone who openly supports violence, or someone who at times does not even know where he is or that he is president at all.

Yeah let's not go supporting idiot lunatic sociapath clowns like Trump or any republican just because Biden doesn't know a damn thing about Bitcoin and thinks its bad for the environment.

Lack of Bitcoin education is not a republican or a democrat thing, it's not even a politician thing at all, its a widespread public thing. Hardly anyone is educated on Bitcoin. Trump's admin tried to force through some insane reckless anti-crypto stuff just before they were kicked out of office, and luckily Biden put a stop to that when he took office. But that doesn't mean Biden is Bitcoin-friendly. He probably just put a stop to it because Biden knew, just like every other sane American knew, that Trump's psychotic reign of terror needed to end and so anything the Trump admin was trying to rush through before that criminal left office should be stopped. Just like 99% of the people out there, Biden doesn't know anything about Bitcoin beyond what he reads in headlines and the headlines say Bitcoin is terrible for the environment. Until we get people who politicians actually listen to educating them on Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining we should expect govt to become Bitcoin friendly. The only reason there are even a handful of corrupt douchebag Republicans who support Bitcoin is because Bitcoin is non-government money and they're all obsessed anti-govt loons who don't believe in any one should have power expect themselves.

I Think Previously Have 10% Tax In Crypto Mining Electricity Bill But Now Thinking That Jumping 10 Percentage To 30 Percentage It’s Very Difficult For Crypto Currency Miner So I Think This Is Not Good For Crypto Currency Miner And If Previous 10% Tax Than Everything Ok.

This is just maybe a proposal but those who are hostile towards bitcoins and cryptocurrency will use this opportunity to cast doubt towards the people and will gonna confuse them with it in their headlines.

I wonder why they always make such kinds of proposals when they are getting something good from these miners and they are getting juicy money from them. They even forgot their real problems which are the important things they need to work on with to improve their economy and their country.

IIRC, there was this statement from him just after that he's got elected as the POTUS that he'll do something important related to crypto. But since there are other things and concerns that he needs to attend first, it was forgotten. And if this was the thing that he's telling, he's just pushing away the miners that will contribute to their economy. AFAIK, each state does have a different ruling and that's why one state like if my memory serves right, in Texas they're planning to mine so that means if this proposal will pass on and becomes a law then that's a huge cut from the government itself on that state.

It's important to note that the Biden administration has not officially announced any plans to push out Bitcoin mining through tax increases. However, it is true that some lawmakers in the US have proposed tax reforms that would impact cryptocurrency mining operations.

   -  Is this proposal that Biden said has been approved? It's like he doesn't know what he's talking about related to cryptocurrency.
It's good that Trump is a bit open minded to bitcoin or crypto at least.

It's a huge burden on crypto miners when it happens to be approved in their country, it's a big pain to be honest. Maybe that's a blessing when Fiat doesn't back their dollar with gold. So it is recovered from the tax.

While it is true that the policies and actions of political leaders can have an impact on the cryptocurrency industry, it is also important to consider the broader context in which these policies are being made. The regulation of cryptocurrencies is an ongoing process, and there are a range of views and perspectives on how best to balance innovation and growth with security and consumer protection.

I would guess that it is more about the government and the approach, when the branches of government such as SEC and FED suggests something, it doesn't matter who the president is, they can do it because they have the independent power to do so.

However, when Biden was offered this advise, he took that as a good idea and he promoted it as well, doesn't mean it's in the law yet, there isn't regarding this yet, no rules or laws or anything. However, when both sides agree on something, which is very very rare, then they accept it. I fear that bitcoin is not liked by politicians and this should not be a shock to anyone that they will put more and more taxes on it.

News update. The Biden administration released a report trying to argue on their 30% cryptomining tax.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2023/05/02/cost-of-cryptomining-dame-tax/

This is very much similar to what the American government has been doing to other types of industries where they use subsidies and taxation to manipulate their growth or their decline. I speculate that miners will begin their exit from America on 2024 and 2025 and go to South America and Asia where they will be welcomed. El Salvador will certainly be one of those places.

https://i.ibb.co/JxdDfr6/E3-B13-FC4-8-D7-C-44-E9-945-B-0-F388-B024371.jpg

A proposed 30% excise tax on cryptocurrency mining firms was the focus of a report released by the White House on Tuesday, in which the administration reiterated its stance that pinching miners’ profits is in the best interest of American communities and the environment.

“Firms do not have to pay for the full cost they impose on others,” the report states, adding that the proposed tax “encourages firms to start taking better account of the harms they impose on society.”

Under the official name of the Digital Asset Mining Energy (DAME) tax, it applies equally to digital asset miners that earn income by validating transactions on proof-of-work networks like Bitcoin and proof-of-stake networks like Ethereum, despite having vastly different levels of energy consumption.

Source https://decrypt.co/138832/white-house-report-30-percent-crypto-mining-tax

I'm surprised. I thought Biding would be the first person to attack crypto. I guess he wants to win out votes boys.

I think, in general, the crypto policy in the US gonna get better and better because they probably understand that if they attack the crypto community than they will get a very, very angry minority that will vote them out. And crypto enthusiasts also can move to other countries because of the regulations and spend their crypto there. I think they don't want to miss on out crypto money so everything would be fine.

Are you sure that they charge same high tax 30% on other industries like cloud storage, AI and more?

The tax on cryptocurrency mining is abnormally high in my opinion and this proposal shows that how the government is skewed on regulating Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. They are subjectively regulating this new industry and are ready to break their own terms, laws, bills just to constrain this industry as much as possible.

So far I don't see they provide anything that is convincing enough with me for their proposed 30% tax on cryptocurrency mining. It's a joke and non sense proposal. I am doubtful that it will be approved by the Congress.

So the US attack on cryptocurrency continues! This clearly show the mentality of the government towards cryptos. In my country, government has imposed 30% tax without the chance of loss offset. So it's very clear that they want to discourage the citizens from crypto matters. US is also moving that way.

Thankfully it's still a proposal but won't take time to become a law because of FED's lobby. Well done US. Many other small countries will surely benefit from such law. Bhutan has planned for a 500 million USD fund to initiate crypto mining in their country. Just FYI.

It appears that we might have some good news on the mining side of bitcoin. According to this article, there was a deal that a vote on lifting the debt ceiling would only occur if the Biden administration agrees to some of the terms from the Republicans in congress. One of these deals included was the removal of the proposed 30% tax on bitcoin miners.



As the details of the agreement reached between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the U.S. debt ceiling were made public Sunday, one notable part of the deal appears to have blocked some taxes proposed by the Biden administration, including the Digital Asset Mining Energy (DAME) excise tax.

Source https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-debt-ceiling-deal-blocks-110108229.html

That's an interesting point. With the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender there should be a decent increase in mining operations in El Salvador over long term, although there is very little news or data about such operations there which is surprising. There definitely is enough potential with renewable energy (geothermal, hydro and solar) that they use too. Not to mention growth of the mining industry will help build more infrastructure for electricity production in the country.

This could attract miners with or without the restrictions in US.

With all this debt ceiling constraints coming up, in particular the ones in the deal, does anyone think it's possible for more taxes of different kinds to be planted on USA residents in order to allow for more (reckless) government spending?

I'm pretty sure that if the USA is tight on cash then most politicians are not going to object to bills that give more (non-borrowed) cash to the government, as the House voting on the debt ceiling bill showed us.

The people of the United States of America are the only ones that can turn this mess around for the greater good, there are now few presidential candidates that have an interest in crypto and I look one up which looks like he understands what Bitcoin and Decentralized mean, if the people vote for such candidate the US will benefit a lot from Bitcoin and crypto in the coming years, as for Biden, I believe he understand too less about Bitcoin and he don't know what to do about it than making Bitcoin miners to have a hell time running their miners every day.

Oh boy, guess miners will move to Kazakhstan now and Bitcoin will probably dip even lower.

And I don't see a reason why they won't accept this proposal. The government hates crypto and miners are those who make crypto work.

Calm down and don't panic. The proposal was dropped, there won't be any 30% mining tax in the US!

https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-mining-tax-debt-ceiling

The tax was outrageous in the first place and meant to destroy mining in the US. We all know that there can be acceptable and unacceptable taxes. Miners already pay income tax on their profits, so adding another large tax on top of it would force them out of business and would be unjust towards miners. Other businesses don't have to pay additional 30% in order to operate.

Allowing a data center to work without a 30% tax and taxing the same data center for switching from storage to mining is stupid.

I think the taxes was a bit of a way to hurt Texas the most and as we all know that's a republican state based on energy and these companies were getting cheaper electricity there compared to any other state give or take. So putting a tax would have hurt them, and that was a great negotiation card to play. Give me the debt ceiling I need and then you can get the tax dropped and start earning again. I feel like both parties played their hands right and they got away with wins together.

I wish every political drama was resolved like this, just get something you want and give something they want and keep doing that, it's the compromise solution that we all need and could make everyone better, instead of what we usually have, lose something of yourself in return of taking something away from the other side.

Here are some situation that have the capacity to crippling the growth of bitcoins and it is better for core developers to strategies counter attack every  future movement that will likely impede the growth of bitcoins by developing a more sophisticated Technology that can cut off the government rule over bitcoins. I once post something about the unforseen and likely occurence, some argued that nothing can happen to bitcoins. Since every government wants to be control of the people their actions may not likely be in support of bitcoins