The US Government wants your Bitcoin Miners!?

[franky1]

energy is already taxed. its why electric prices are high because:
energy after sold from powerplant to the grid also includes the cost of taxes and emissions credits

This is slightly  different.
Food already taxed in thee supermarket. But if you open a restaurant to sell food, you need to pay new taxes.

technically any income for work done should be taxed. so i think you are on about identifying the miners to ensure the IRS know enough so miners do pay their income/cap gains tax they should already be paying for their rewards.. (much like side hustle freelancers that should have always declared their self-employment income  are now being enforced to)

i was more talking about the energy/carbon tax stuff which is already handled at the electric purchase side pre-work
(the grid stability stuff and emissions control stuff the survey purports to be about)

inshort
many asic farms in america already play the carbon credit secondary market so already paying the emission tax

[pooya87]

Fortunately, the current US government initiative only applies to companies. Individuals won't have to worry about mining at home in the timebeing.

I say it all depends on the actual reason they're doing this. Since it is not exactly clear why we can only speculate. But if this is truly based on a real fear about energy security inside US (considering the ongoing energy crisis), it could spread to individuals very quickly too. And it is trivial to detect any home miner based on their out of the ordinary electricity consumption.

[tread93]

Do you think that the US would ever try to ban Bitcoin mining? If this is just on a corporate level then it is true that individual miners are void to this requested information from the US Gov't for now. Maybe some huge regulations are underway for this, but its not the right track for progression of Bitcoin, it would truly be amazing if all countries were to embrace BTC like El Salvador has.

If by some chance I didn't know that everything that is being asked about cryptocurrency miners comes from the US government, I would think that it was about a country where mining was illegal or maybe in a gray zone and that now that government has decided to legalize everything. This is how it turns out that the US authorities did not know anything about what they now want to know, and that they themselves have no mechanisms to find out.

Whether this is just a show for the public or whether some of the anti-Bitcoin politicians managed to lobby for the initiation of such actions remains a question to which we may one day get an answer - but all this reminds me of what happened in China before they decided to ban mining.

[size=7pt
However, I don't think that the US government is so desperate that it would try to increase its budget in such a way that it would try to take something more from crypto miners - well, their annual military budget is greater than the value of all BTC in circulation.

The USD isn't backed by the "good faith and credit of the US Gov't" it is backed by the largest military force in the world with a budget larger than bitcoin  

[Die_empty]

Fortunately, the current US government initiative only applies to companies. Individuals won't have to worry about mining at home in the timebeing.

I say it all depends on the actual reason they're doing this. Since it is not exactly clear why we can only speculate. But if this is truly based on a real fear about energy security inside US (considering the ongoing energy crisis), it could spread to individuals very quickly too. And it is trivial to detect any home miner based on their out of the ordinary electricity consumption.

I remember during the early stage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that there was an energy crisis in Europe. Some countries had to consider rationing power. The US is fighting wars in different locations and the war drums in the Middle East are sounding louder every day. Maybe this might be a sincere data collection process to analyse the energy use of Bitcoin miners in the US. I might be quest to know how they can manage power in case of emergency.

It could also be that they want to have control over miners so that they can mandate them to censor transactions which is a total attack on Bitcoin privacy. The US government might also want to make money from these miners through taxation. So it might be a ploy to collect data for effective tax collection. I know it is not easy for miners to relocate to other friendlier countries but we might see some of them moving if policies in the US become harsher.       

[pinggoki]

I guess, it's going to be a high time now for miners to go to Canada or somewhere that's got a cold climate and take your retirement there and continue mining, I don't think that the registry of bitcoin miners is going to be a good idea and it infringes on the privacy that every miner should have, if you want to, you can also go to Caribbean countries or in my country, it's cheaper to live here and you can probably set up your rig in a place here that's cool all year round, the electricity isn't cheap though.

[Lucius]

Whether this is just a show for the public or whether some of the anti-Bitcoin politicians managed to lobby for the initiation of such actions remains a question to which we may one day get an answer - but all this reminds me of what happened in China before they decided to ban mining.

The correlation the journalist made in the article is interesting. They mentioned the last country whose government required extensive information from Bitcoin miners. That was Venezuela. It the months following the survey, the authorities seized loads of miners and just took over the mining business from their end. 

Journalists are always looking for something to make their article as "sensational" as possible, but to compare what happened in Venezuela with what the US government is trying to do now is quite pointless in my opinion. The US authorities would not allow themselves to engage in such business at all, because that would mean giving Bitcoin legitimacy to the extent that the headlines "US government "produces" Bitcoin" would appear.

We all know that the US authorities sell all the seized BTC at auctions and that they do not want to have any possession of the same - although some may say that they have a hidden agenda in this whole BTC mining business. Because if they put their paws on all those mining farms in the US and introduce censorship of transactions, they would make a real mess, at least for a while.

[kryptqnick]

I guess it's a little late to point it out, but there is another thread on this topic, although in a more general spirit of discussing this news. I'll leave the link here in case op would like to have a look at the replies there.
If by war-supporting government you're referring to help that the USA gives to Ukraine, I disagree with you on that because it's not about supporting war but supporting Ukrainian effort of surviving imperial aspirations of our neighbour. If it's about Israel, that's a different story, of course.
Anyway, in the point of the news, it's not bad to collect info on mining per se, but if the goal is to show how much energy it's taking and to argue that it should be restricted or banned, that's certainly unfair. Also, I believe it's wrong to target just the mining industry instead of reviewing all major energy consumers and their impact.

[pooya87]

Fortunately, the current US government initiative only applies to companies. Individuals won't have to worry about mining at home in the timebeing.

I say it all depends on the actual reason they're doing this. Since it is not exactly clear why we can only speculate. But if this is truly based on a real fear about energy security inside US (considering the ongoing energy crisis), it could spread to individuals very quickly too. And it is trivial to detect any home miner based on their out of the ordinary electricity consumption.

I remember during the early stage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that there was an energy crisis in Europe. Some countries had to consider rationing power. The US is fighting wars in different locations and the war drums in the Middle East are sounding louder every day. Maybe this might be a sincere data collection process to analyse the energy use of Bitcoin miners in the US. I might be quest to know how they can manage power in case of emergency.

It could also be that they want to have control over miners so that they can mandate them to censor transactions which is a total attack on Bitcoin privacy. The US government might also want to make money from these miners through taxation. So it might be a ploy to collect data for effective tax collection. I know it is not easy for miners to relocate to other friendlier countries but we might see some of them moving if policies in the US become harsher.       

It could be a combination of all these reasons, and I think the "energy scare" seems like a legitimate concern from point of view of the governments around the world. Specially since we've already had countries that faced challenges in the past or at least claimed they did, and the long running FUD about Bitcoin's energy consumption and the exaggerations that come with it.

Imagine if the big bad bull run started and some of the predictions came true (eg. $500k), that could be a massive surge in number of miners hence an increasing pressure on the electrical grid as mining bitcoin becomes super profitable! Trying to regulate miners by then will be already too late.

Add to that scare the destabilized energy market (the supply side), the increasing tensions/conflicts, and the increasing energy prices and we've got ourselves a mess.

Of course from our point of view, the reasons why they are doing it should not be the biggest concern. We should be more concerned about what they'll do with their newly found control over miners... censorship enforcement(?) Then as they push for more regulations we should seek solutions to counter that power abuse...

[Gormicsta]

We have been discussing something similar to this. You can see it here if you click on this link https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5483892.msg63601670#msg63601670

When I saw the news, I think the United States government are up to something. Let us keep watching as the drama continues. Probably they will look for ways to discourage mining.

This news only proves that the government are yet to be tired of their foul plays against Bitcoin, which have so been ineffective so far. No matter what their plans are, I'm positive it still wouldn't yield any outcome, because even if they succeed to enact some sort of regulation on miners that would in some way restrict miners or disrupt miners in the United States, they can only exercise such power within their jurisdiction and not outside of it. There are Miners all over the world and not just in the United States, so even if they succeed to stop thr miners in the United States ( which I doubt is even possible) there are still other miners out there who would still continue mining keep Bitcoin going as usual.

I just believe this is one of the government's futile attempts to stop the evolution of Bitcoin, because they've tried severally in the past and failed, which just proves that Bitcoin is meant to happen, with or without their consent.

[franky1]

It could also be that they want to have control over miners so that they can mandate them to censor transactions which is a total attack on Bitcoin privacy.

miners have no hard drives, miners have no mempools. miners do not consolidate or choose transactions... miners just turn electric into SHA256 results
so relax about that
dont confuse "miners" with "mining pools"
mining pools manage the nuances of creating block candidates filled with transactions.. not miners

[Pmalek]

Fortunately, the current US government initiative only applies to companies. Individuals won't have to worry about mining at home in the timebeing.

Small miners with only a few ASICs don't provide that much to the total hashrate I would reckon. So you can't get around this requirement and law (as they say) by moving some or all of your gear to private citizens and home mining.   

If things get "tough", there's nothing stopping anyone from creating their own mining hardware.

What do you mean with creating new mining hardware? You are not trying to say that miners could make their own ASICs, are you?

I guess, it's going to be a high time now for miners to go to Canada or somewhere that's got a cold climate and take your retirement there and continue mining.

Except, let's not forget the Canadian trucker's protest and what the Canadian government did to them with the help of centralized crypto exchanges.

if you want to, you can also go to Caribbean countries or in my country, it's cheaper to live here and you can probably set up your rig in a place here that's cool all year round, the electricity isn't cheap though.

Access to plenty of cheap energy is one of the most important factors. If mining isn't profitable and electricity prices are too high, no one is going there.

We all know that the US authorities sell all the seized BTC at auctions and that they do not want to have any possession of the same...

Only because they need cash and fiat to finance their interests and government spending.

Then as they push for more regulations we should seek solutions to counter that power abuse...

Once they take away a little bit of your freedom, you are never getting it back. The next step is taking away a bit more.

No matter what their plans are, I'm positive it still wouldn't yield any outcome, because even if they succeed to enact some sort of regulation on miners that would in some way restrict miners or disrupt miners in the United States, they can only exercise such power within their jurisdiction and not outside of it. There are Miners all over the world and not just in the United States, so even if they succeed to stop thr miners in the United States ( which I doubt is even possible) there are still other miners out there who would still continue mining keep Bitcoin going as usual.

The US miners are, at this stage, crucial to the network. An attack on them would be costly for Bitcoin.

[thecodebear]

Fortunately, the current US government initiative only applies to companies. Individuals won't have to worry about mining at home in the timebeing.

Small miners with only a few ASICs don't provide that much to the total hashrate I would reckon. So you can't get around this requirement and law (as they say) by moving some or all of your gear to private citizens and home mining.   

If things get "tough", there's nothing stopping anyone from creating their own mining hardware.

What do you mean with creating new mining hardware? You are not trying to say that miners could make their own ASICs, are you?

I guess, it's going to be a high time now for miners to go to Canada or somewhere that's got a cold climate and take your retirement there and continue mining.

Except, let's not forget the Canadian trucker's protest and what the Canadian government did to them with the help of centralized crypto exchanges.

if you want to, you can also go to Caribbean countries or in my country, it's cheaper to live here and you can probably set up your rig in a place here that's cool all year round, the electricity isn't cheap though.

Access to plenty of cheap energy is one of the most important factors. If mining isn't profitable and electricity prices are too high, no one is going there.

We all know that the US authorities sell all the seized BTC at auctions and that they do not want to have any possession of the same...

Only because they need cash and fiat to finance their interests and government spending.

Then as they push for more regulations we should seek solutions to counter that power abuse...

Once they take away a little bit of your freedom, you are never getting it back. The next step is taking away a bit more.

No matter what their plans are, I'm positive it still wouldn't yield any outcome, because even if they succeed to enact some sort of regulation on miners that would in some way restrict miners or disrupt miners in the United States, they can only exercise such power within their jurisdiction and not outside of it. There are Miners all over the world and not just in the United States, so even if they succeed to stop thr miners in the United States ( which I doubt is even possible) there are still other miners out there who would still continue mining keep Bitcoin going as usual.

The US miners are, at this stage, crucial to the network. An attack on them would be costly for Bitcoin.

Alright but what would such an attack do?

If the govt tries in some way to restrict mining in the US, companies can move their miners to other nations, it's not like this hasn't happened before.
And what would the attack actually accomplish? People don't realize how secure Bitcoin is. Like, if hashrate drops a lot Bitcoin isn't suddenly no longer secure. It's been globally secure for many years now, when it had a fraction of the hash rate that it has today. The only threat would be if somehow a ton of mining machines went to people who wanted to spend billions of dollars to disrupt the Bitcoin network (ie. launch a 51% attack). Don't forget three years ago China shut down mining, at a time when the hashrate was like a quarter of what it is today, and the hashrate dropped by 50% - so to about a eighth what it is today - and everything was fine.

yes we should be suspicious of the intent of the govt trying to get all the details on bitcoin mining because we know that the politicians don't understand how mining works or its benefit and they literally just see this as wasted energy and they are going to want to do something to curtail it. But likely the most they could do is to harm the profitability of mining in the US. Which would suck for American mining companies, but they'd just move their operations offshore. And it's not like this would go down without resistance. You'd have power providers that have contracts with mining companies, lobbyists from Wall St (cuz some of these companies are public), bitcoin owners, the mining companies themselves, and anyone who understands how mining works and its benefits all fighting against any proposed anti-mining legislation.

I think at best this prompts politicians to see that mining uses a lot of green energy, hopefully it sparks more discussion in Congress with expert witnesses that can once again try to clue politicians in to how it all works and why its good, and maybe politicians decide to help nudge the mining industry even more towards green energy which itself would help out green energy production in the US so that'd be a win-win. But that's definitely not the reason for this sort of survey being initiated so it'd be a lot of work to get the politicians close to this best case scenario.

[PrivacyG]

Very ironic to me.  I suppose we will hear about Bitcoin and its supposed effect on the environment soon again.  Which is again very ironic.  Are we not supposed to go full electric a k a Eco Friendly?  How come is Bitcoin the culprit of environmental pollution all of a sudden then.

Something is definitely up.  Could it be that they are attempting to slowly de anonymize every body on the Network?  First they instill fear into you so you voluntarily go and declare every thing you do with your Bitcoin.  Exchanges have Know Your Customer already.  Now this?  It seems like an attempt to add more data to their data base of Bitcoin users rather than a preparation for some sort of war against Bitcoin.

[Pmalek]

Could it be that they are attempting to slowly de anonymize every body on the Network?  First they instill fear into you so you voluntarily go and declare every thing you do with your Bitcoin.  Exchanges have Know Your Customer already.  Now this?  It seems like an attempt to add more data to their data base of Bitcoin users rather than a preparation for some sort of war against Bitcoin.

What you just described could be information that is valuable for a war. It doesn't have to be a war against Bitcoin in a way to try and get rid of it or stop it. It can be a war against people, their freedom of choice and their privacy. The obtained data could tomorrow be abused where they say we need additional sources of electricity, so we are shutting down some of the not so essential pressure on the grid. Guess what BTC miners? We are sad to inform you that decision has fallen on some of you. Tough luck. 

[PrivacyG]

What you just described could be information that is valuable for a war. It doesn't have to be a war against Bitcoin in a way to try and get rid of it or stop it. It can be a war against people, their freedom of choice and their privacy.

Governments have been in a war against the freedom of choice and the Privacy of people for a LONG time now.  If that is the case then this thing about collecting information from Miners would be just another bullet.

But then this would be a direct attack against Bitcoin too.  Bitcoin is useless in a world covered in forms and Know Your Customer procedures.  What would be the point then.  It would be cheaper, easier and less risky to use Fiat at that point.

[Kelward]

This use of Electricity regulation by the US government to get at mining activities in their country is surely a cover up for something bigger, because the miners are paying for the electric consumption that they use for their businesses, so I don't understand how that can be a problem for them. Unless the US is having an energy crisis which I very much doubt, because they're a technologically advanced nation, we can only hear of power outages in developing countries. The US government and most countries will love nothing more than to centralize Bitcoin, they'll want to take advantage of any areas that concerns it to regulate it's activities.

[Knight Hider]

Let's all start software mining and register 5 hash per second mining operations with the government.

[Synchronice]

Here are a few interesting points from the article:

- They require that all mining facilities respond and fill out the survey as it's required by law.
- The companies need to submit their addresses and points of contact.
- The companies must state if they are mining Proof-of-Stake or Proof-of-Work coins. We all know this is bullshit, as Bitcoin is the target here.
- The companies need to state how many facilities they have in the US and provide precise coordinates.
- Mining companies must state the number of miners, their models, and the number of produced hashrate.
- EIA also requires information about how much electricity is being consumed.
- They need to name their electricity service providers.

Source:
https://tftc.io/eia-bitcoin-mining-survey/

Official survey announcement:
https://www.eia.gov/pressroom/releases/press550.php?ref=tftc.io

I'll be frank and ask this question, is this something unusual into this request? I always thought that mining companies have to register as a business that generates money via Bitcoin mining and they also have to state how much equipment do they buy, how much do they pay into it and how much electricity they consume. Wait, were the running mining businesses without filling this information? Am I totally lost here?

The problem is the history of such governments. Apart from what was mentioned in OP, we should remember what the US government did to MARA pool, forcing them to censor transactions which is a direct attack on Bitcoin.
Knowing miners, they could force them to only connect to "government approved" pools so that they can first increase the hashrate of such malicious pools like MARA pool and successfully attack Bitcoin that way.

That's the aim, C.E.N.S.O.R.S.H.I.P!
Bitcoin will become censored, that's why Blackrock got involved and that's why ETFs were approved.

Food already taxed in thee supermarket. But if you open a restaurant to sell food, you need to pay new taxes.

We pay so many taxes, it's ridiculous. You manufacture, pay taxes. Distribution, pay taxes. Store in the supermarket shelf to sell, pay taxes. Then there comes the person who worked hard and got taxed for that, buys a product that has been taxed for three times. And it's ridiculous especially when you earn normal salary in Europe.

[Abiky]

Do you think that the US would ever try to ban Bitcoin mining? If this is just on a corporate level then it is true that individual miners are void to this requested information from the US Gov't for now. Maybe some huge regulations are underway for this, but its not the right track for progression of Bitcoin, it would truly be amazing if all countries were to embrace BTC like El Salvador has.

The grand plan is to prevent people from getting access to Bitcoin. It has always been like this since BTC's inception. The fact that governments didn't pay close attention to BTC within its early days, tell us that they underestimated its ability to replace Fiat currencies. Now that they see how big Bitcoin has become, they're trying to do everything in their power to stop it. Regulations will only get tougher over time as more people become aware of the revolution.

I wouldn't be surprised if someday American citizens are required to provide proof of ID (KYC) just to purchase a Bitcoin miner. It will be all an attempt to try to control the mining process. But the US government will fail, thanks to the way Bitcoin was designed. There are two things that could happen. Either people start making their own miners or Bitcoin moves to an ASIC-resistant PoW algorithm to render governments' efforts useless. We can't tell what will happen in the future, so lets hope for the best.

[bitmover]

Food already taxed in thee supermarket. But if you open a restaurant to sell food, you need to pay new taxes.

We pay so many taxes, it's ridiculous. You manufacture, pay taxes. Distribution, pay taxes. Store in the supermarket shelf to sell, pay taxes. Then there comes the person who worked hard and got taxed for that, buys a product that has been taxed for three times. And it's ridiculous especially when you earn normal salary in Europe.

Imagine living with a normal salary in a development country 
Level hard!