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
Those get used by MUCH higher number of users and could have much higher power bill impact.
And better 30% tax than 0%, but I'm not convinced that 30% is the appropriate tax for this.Coal is slowly becoming obsolete, but there's simply no way to stop gas peaker plants for the next 10+ years, maybe 50+ years / rest of my life. There's no battery technology cheaper than a Gas Peaker plant right now and it might even be physically impossible to make a battery chemistry that is as efficient as it.
I honestly think that we're closer to solving Fusion than making large scale batteries on the level we need to mitigate peakers. I think there's a slight chance that H2 solves this problem, but there's still significant hurdles to an H2 / green / carbon-neutral peaking solution on our grids.
stop electing dinosaurs to "run" a modern society.
Nuclear.
It already exists. I can be scaled up and down very quickly, and with greater efficiency, then gas.
sure now they want to profit that they know the greedy bastards have been sucking up so much power...
but the culprits are and have been vaguely degen's scamming midwesterners and 3rd worlders on r/memestonks .
Software bros really are some of the most clueless people when it comes to morality I have ever encountered ....
arresting someone isn't about making money in a democratic society it's about preserving the balance and order needed to avoid social chaos, and holding people accountable for stealing resources and scamming people in this case.
Those people are causing social decline with their behaviors tertiary to the act of the mining itself- the way they recruit people is like a ponzi scheme and they've got nvidia in on it and a bunch of foreign actors; now they're about to blow out the power grid.
Should put a stop to it, can only assume at this point the gov't must be complicit for not acting more swiftly
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.
Gas is economically the opposite solution: low-capex high-maintenance/fuel costs.
Why do you think that high-capex / low-fuel costs would be an economic solution to the peaker problem? If you end up only utilizing the nuclear power plant 30% of the time (during the peak 30% of the year), you've effectively made Nuclear Power plants cost 300% more. (that is: you spent hundreds-of-millions of $$$ on a 100MW power plant, but only are using 30MW on the average. That's like spending 300% more money to make less power). Furthermore, the bulk of that nuclear-capex isn't even like, building the nuclear plant. Its all about obtaining permits and local permissions to place a plant at any particular location.
Meanwhile, overbuilding natural gas capacity is both economically feasible, and the default mode of operation. That's why its the economic choice for peaking. When you run a natural gas at 30% of the time, you're saving 70% of the fuel costs, and natural gas's bulk of costs are ... fuel.
Meanwhile, Solar / Hydroelectric / Nuclear are all baseload plants where fuel-costs are either zero, or nearly zero. They will NEVER be an economic solution to the peaking problem because the economies of these technologies are just backwards. The only solution from a "Green" perspective is storage. So that's Pumped-Hydro (a subset of Hydro), CAES, gravity storage, or chemical batteries (at least, with the tech we have today). Or whatever future storage comes out.
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That's why power / civil engineers talk about "baseload" vs "peaker" usages of power plants. Some technologies are just economically suited for baseload (ie: high-capex, predictable loads with high utilization). While other technologies are suited for peaking (low-capex, unpredictable loads with low utilization).