Bitcoin and crypto prices have surged back this year, thrusting bitcoin into the limelight and causing Donald Trump to make a surprise crypto flip.
The bitcoin price topped $73,000 per bitcoin this week, eclipsing its 2021 previous all-time high and propelling the price of smaller cryptocurrencies ethereum, XRPXRP and solana higher as the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock eyes a $90 trillion crypto bonanza.
Now, as Tesla billionaire Elon Musk makes a dramatic return to the front lines of crypto, U.S. president Joe Biden has been accused of trying to “destroy” crypto in the U.S. and “wipe out billions of dollars of investor value.”
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This week, the Biden administration reintroduced a controversial proposal for a tax on bitcoin and crypto miners who use high powered computers to secure crypto networks and verify transactions.
“Any firm using computing resources, whether owned by the firm or leased from others, to mine digital assets would be subject to an excise tax equal to 30% of the costs of electricity used in digital asset mining,” the U.S. Treasury Department wrote in its 2025 revenue proposal.
“Implementing a blanket 30% federal tax on digital mining will certainly kill the sector and wipe out billions of dollars of investor value virtually immediately in the U.S.,” Taras Kulyk, the chief executive of mining hardware company SunnySide Digital, told DL News.
The digital asset mining energy tax (Dame), first proposed a year ago, would impose a 30% excise tax on bitcoin and crypto miners electricity costs, likely forcing them to flee the country as they did from China when it cracked down on miners in 2021.
Globally, bitcoin miners are thought to use as much electricity each year as some small countries and most of the world’s bitcoin mining now happens in the U.S. following the China exodus.
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“A proposed 30% punitive tax on digital asset mining would destroy any foothold the industry has in America,” pro-bitcoin and crypto senator Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming, posted to X.
Lummis added that the White House budget is “incredibly bullish on crypto assets,” due to expectations of future tax revenue that could be gathered.
“Biden’s 2025 budget is very bullish on bitcoin,” Pierre Rochard, vice president of research at bitcoin miner Riot Platforms, said on X in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek post. “They are counting on it for their tax revenues.”
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