Bullish for Ethereum I guess, which has cut its electricity usage by 99.9% or something since switching to Proof of Stake.
Smart move?
If you're saying that inflation in general is bad for the economy, I would encourage you to read this: https://www.britannica.com/money/inflation-vs-deflation
Maybe get a lady friend to blow on your mouse before you click buy.
https://twitter.com/TimmerFidelity/status/165311478425704038...
Every stalwart crypto supporter talks out of both sides of their mouth every time they are questioned about the actual utility of crypto. Is it the future of money (AKA useful liquidity) or is it a great investment that can only increase in value (AKA speculative deflationary asset)?
It cannot be both and it is certainly not useful as money. Makes you wonder why DOES the line go up?
If the environmental costs of crypto mining are genuinely your concern, the best solution is to advocate an agnostic solution, like restricting CO2 generating sources of energy, or energy consumption for ALL non-essentials (e.g. tourism, video games, crypto, etc).
Singling out crypto for its environmental costs, and calling for targeted restrictions on it that exempt other non-essential uses of energy, suggests a superficial basis for your position, like a negative emotional association, or dislike of crypto proponents.
In this case, the creation of crypto bits is, ostensibly, wealth creation. Of course the government can tax the materials that go into that asymmetrically, much as many states exempt residential natural gas from tax but not commercial.
But in fact, they don't work that way. Smoking and alcohol consumption is qualitatively different than mining crypto. Due to how much medical expenses are socialized, they generate negative externalities due to the damage they do to health. So-called sin taxes are also discouraging a behavior that we can objectively state is harmful to the person who engages in it.
There is no objective basis on which to claim crypto mining is more harmful than any other non-essential behavior. Using taxes to punish it is an inappropriate use of government power based on the prevailing standards in the Free World.
It generates demand for finite electrical resources that have a net negative externality on the climate. https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/09/08/fact.... The argument "But people would be using the electricity for something else if not for crypto" is unsupported; given the uniquely mobile and speculative nature of proof-of-work crypto, it is creating an environment to tap gas wells that would otherwise stay shuttered and increase the rate of the climate slide.
While it is perhaps no more harmful than any other non-essential behavior, it's the non-essential behavior that's driving demand to burn fossil fuels. You put taxes where human behavior is, not where it isn't.
The expansion of any industry does that. Singling out crypto suggests something else motivating the measure.
>>The argument "But people would be using the electricity for something else if not for crypto" is unsupported; given the uniquely mobile and speculative nature of proof-of-work crypto,
That argument is not necessary. The point is any non-essential activity that uses electricity has this environmental impact, and said impact could be reduced by taxing CO2 emissions from non-essential activity.