Topic: The US Government wants your Bitcoin Miners!? (Read 896 times)

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The newest reports are now suggesting that the Biden administration is cancelling the data collection survey that the government and the EIA planned on US bitcoin miners. They will also destroy all data they have collected so far (if you believe them). That's not the end of the story, though. The collection process may still happen, but first there will be a public notice and comments. 

The Texas Blockchain Council initiated a lawsuit against the data collection, which was one of the reasons the government stopped it.

Sources:
https://twitter.com/BitcoinPierre/status/1763631462484414884
https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1763659012929622217

you have to zoom out WEF and beyond, they want everything tracked and traced - down to every living thing. they are literally coming from your soul

if you want to mine - you should solo mine or support non-kyc pool. botcoytt the NWO/agenda 2030. it's a scam, to control and eliminate the population. sounds ridiculous until you look into it. you mentioned war. that is a globalist too to control, eliminate, & profit.

at some point, people have to remember what is right, not what is law. stop complying with psychopaths who want you to own nothing and be "happy".

personally i will never stop mining, running a node, having self-custody of my keys. I'm not filing out any forms because it's the right thing to do.

I agree, but this is another discussion. Just as with the current system, the oligarchs who finance these crimes are practically untouchable, and we, the "small players" if you allow me, are doomed to be in scrutiny, investigation, and all that just because we evaded a scanty tax. However, I was answering to why it is rationale to assume there will be more big players over the course of time.

Sounds like a big part of the pie will be outside the government's control. Maybe that's not completely in favor of them. Needless to say that universal "taint" is another level of inaccurate bullshit.

I think that they just want to know everything about citizens. At least i hope that they are not gonna seize them

Oh, they want to profit from it alright. I have no doubts about that. What I have doubts about is how happy they are to see you and me profit from it. We are the ones who are going to be put under scrutiny and investigated for money laundering and financing terrorism, not them.

If it comes to that, we will have two classes of bitcoin. KYC and AML-compliant bitcoin coming out of government-approved services, and the "dirty bitcoin" that people earn of the books and keep in non-custodial wallets they can't put their paws on.

i wouldnt call it a war on bitcoin. id call it a WALL on bitcoin

creating barriers of entry is more about giving those with money, position, prestige a higher level of success and ease compared to the normal guy, its like artificially causing demand for the prestigious offering while making the start up look bad.

take anything..
you cant open a shop these days by just putting a sign outside your house. you need to buy liability insurance for any patrons. you need to get planning permission for any signage at the front of building, you need to change the purpose of the building from residential to business. then you have to pay some business tax to local government. you need to then build a business plan and submit it to a bank to get a business bank account. and so on and so on

its not a war on commerce, its just setting min standards to create a barrier of entry that benefit those that are ahead of the game instead of those starting out..

even farming. the EPA wants inspections, food standards, the list goes on.
making the family farm unsuccessful while bringing profits for the industrial farm

making the hobby miner unprofitable while the asic farm that meets the grade be successful
one prime example is things like carbon credits and income tax/cap gains

small independent asic users on a pools running from their home garage using grid electric they have no special contracts with vs a industrial asic farm that has all the most efficient asics in the most cheapest electric thats hydro power contracted thus not costing them carbon credits.. being big enough to afford an accountant that can avoid tax of cap gains.. will win compared to a hobby miner

so when governments are getting audited accounts from a asic farm paying after deductions just 2% tax legally. the hobby miner self-assessing paying upto 40%. the government will want to chase the small guy that avoids filing. so they may want to know all miners on the network to chase tax evaders

its the same game for many industries
so i dont see it as war.. more like a wall(barrier of entry) to benefit the privileged

if wall street sees citizens owning bitcoin direct as a competition to their hopes citizens buy their pension pot shares. then they will lobby for regulations that make barriers of entry for direct btc ownership by independent citizens

"Emergency" - LOL!
What do they even consider an emergency? Are the US now running out of power and is Bitcoin to blame for it? Highly unlikely to be the case....


All the information that they need to be able to strike and seize the existing bitcoin and the mining hardware. Any miner in the US should be focusing on getting the f×ck out instead of filling in that survey. That survey seems like a one way ticket to their doom.

Or, maybe they'll just print money to try and buy existing operations out, and if they don't comply, then play dirty...if history is any indicator, that's the motive that must surely be behind this "emergency survey".


This is my take though franky1 might either be onto the more realistic potential outcome of this survey or what will happen after my dystopian thought quoted above

funny thing.. ETF are not even IOU bitcoin. there is no ownership claim current or future when buying shares..
funny thing is your prefered subnetwork you promote is about swapping future ownership. thus is IOU-bitcoin

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anyways
this topics mentions of the survey and this
bitcoin isnt going away.. so "can" lead down a dark path where the next stage could be
FERC getting involved with regulating what miners should be used in america(energy efficiency rating like kitchen refrigerators/washers),
and EPA getting involved in location regulations depending on local/national grid demands on fosil powered plants in certain regions
and NERC getting involved in location regulations limiting how many devices are operating on local circuits to avoid neighbourhood surges and brownouts
and DoE getting involved in creating regulations of identifying and requiring registration of mining for flimsy excuses of preventing energy theft, environment impacts and social disorder caused by excess use above capacity plus more then just all of the above

im not saying all this will play out. but its worth keeping an eye out and expect it might/could happen

I think you disregard the fact that cryptocurrencies are part of big tech. It is in the interest of each individual separately to take a slice of the cake. We often hear from companies that they're planning to invest, and this year, we even had an ETF approved. I'm not in favor of "IOU-bitcoin", but that's a sign that it's being incorporated in the private sector. It may not take long until the (new) people in power are Bitcoin owners, and want to take it to the next level (e.g., officially recognizing it as whatever).

I watched a short clip of a guy the other day who was talking about human rights and freedom in the United States. He said something that stuck in my mind. He said that your freedom to say or do what you want to depends on how insignificant you are. Think about that for a second. If you are insignificant and don't matter, and you aren't bothering those in power who don't want to be bothered, you have the freedom to do what you want. If you grow an audience that listens to you, you only have an illusion of freedom and you can no longer say or do what you want without consequences.

Any business is run under the same illusion. If it's not bothering those in power, they let it be. If it becomes powerful itself or starts pointing to the wrongdoings of others, action is taken to stop it or minimize its influence.   

If the US government ever makes a move against miners in this way, miners should stand up and refuse to comply with these terms. As previous posters have mention that mining companies already pay taxes and regulation costs etc

There is no need for a registry? Its getting out of hand when your own GOV wants a list of people doing "specific activities". Doesn't matter what they are or what peoples opinion of those said activities are. The question is, where does your rights TRULY end, and where does the governments begin?

Just like flagging segwit when it was first launched miners had to vote on it by accepting it or not. If this ever comes, as a miner its your duty to just reject it on face.

I am not from the US, so I don't know anything about the regulations regarding mining bitcoin for private entities. But I am pretty sure that it's your responsibility to report to the IRS any income that you receive or generate. Bitcoin falls into one such category that you have to report. If you don't do it, maybe nothing will happen and nobody will find out. It's like failing to report any other taxes. Maybe the IRS won't notice or maybe they will and you will be facing penalties and possibly jail time.

One miner could go unnoticed. Having your whole basement equipped with ASICs will probably raise some alarms about what you are spending your electricity on and why your bills are so high. You could get raided if the authorities mistaken your home for a marihuana lab.   

I think what the US government want to achieve is total control of all activities relating to Bitcoin. They want to know who gets what, who is doing what and all players in Bitcoin.  This reinforces the fact that the fight for economic power and dominance is real and anything that might shift that power away from them is a threat. I feel they might have tried through the regulated exchanges and got results they are not impressed with because self custodian wallets still exist. Do not be surprise if they decided to heap allegations on miners just as they did with mixers.

Even when the greed of the US government is open, The question is, do they have a pure motive for wanting that to happen? This is where they show that they are very thirsty for control of Bitcoin's investor holders. When I read such news about the intentions of the US government, it's shocking.

They are doing everything to control Bitcoin, even though we know and they know very well that it will never happen. They will decentralize Bitcoin first before what they want happens.

Does taxation only apply to crypto mining companies? Or home mining as well? I fail to see how the US will be able to tax someone mining at their basement. Especially when it's solo mining. I won't be surprised if mining pools start asking for personal ID documents (KYC) due to US government regulations. Only then, it will be easy enough to enforce taxation on personal miners.

Maybe we'll see decentralized mining pools such as P2Pool.in or Smartpool.io take off in the future? The government won't stop hunting down Bitcoin and its variants (altcoins), so we should expect the worst. 

Well, yes, that's right. Only bitcoin consumes electricity in the country and threatens the stability of the power grid.

/sarcasm off

Another demonization of bitcoin / mining to create a plausible pretext for struggle regulation.

This is the beginning of the end of the "wild west" era in the cryptocurrency industry. The regulator begins his last campaign for the scalps taxes of miners. Or not quite the last one. At the next stage will they come for bitcoin holders?

It’s not out of simple curiosity that they want to know everything in detail about miners. Total regulation (miners) has been launched.

Bitcoin mining is already taxed in the United States according to whatever law exists in the jurisdiction the mining operation is located. Mining companies pay taxes like any other business ventures, they aren't exempt from it. Plus, the companies are registered as being mining operations, so there is already a paper trail of what they are doing.

This is much expected if you ask me, because there is no way that Bitcoin miners could operate on United States soil and not be noticed or accounted for by the government,  so if anyone asks, I will say the Biden government is up to two things which are.

1: They want to tax Bitcoin mining activities,  to make money from the business to sort out their debt.


2: the government will want to control the mining activities, which to me is a grave danger to Bitcoin community, because with such control, they can do whatever they feel like with Bitcoin mining.

Couldn't agree more with you, mate. Politicians are looking for their own interests. It's no secret that "crypto-friendly" politicians on the US and abroad are the minority. RFK, Bukele, and Milei are a "tiny speck" compared to the rest of the pack. Despite their support, we can never expect them to represent Bitcoin's principles of freedom and privacy.

At least we know the mining industry won't be going anywhere. If the US closes its doors to mining, other countries will embrace the revolution with open arms. That's the beauty of having a decentralized and censorship-resistant cryptocurrency. With how far Bitcoin has gone since its inception, I'm certain it will live alongside traditional Fiat currencies for generations. Just my opinion

There is no such thing as crypto-friendly politicians on a large scale. Politicians represent the interest of private businesses, big tech, pharma, etc., and these giants aren't interested and don't need bitcoin or crypto. They don't mind profiting from you and me using it, but they don't represent self-custody and any type of increase in personal freedoms.

Luckily, they can move to another country, worst case scenario, remember China Ban 3 years ago

Perhaps tweeting a picture and those laser eyes officially declared Biden's end game. I don't see any more worthy coincidence. Perhaps he finally realized that bitcoin was the way to give hope to his position and his team. Lol, Just like you said, he knew his time was limited.

First they start regulating it, then they'll end up banning it once they realize they can't stop the revolution. We always knew what was coming from the very beginning. Governments want power/control over people. And Bitcoin is the exact opposite of everything banks and governments stand for. This recent move by the US is the first step towards further scrutiny of the mining industry. Things could get worse in the long run.

America needs crypto-friendly politicians that will benefit the industry in the long run. Otherwise, you can say goodbye to BTC and altcoins in the US for good (although it will still be possible to use them under the radar). No one can predict the future, so lets hope for the best.

even if "foundry" node that manages the pool is in location T. asics do not need to also be in location T
if governments only wanted to attack a POOL. foundry can just run its node+stratum from location A in minutes-hours

if governments wanted to ban mining in T. then asic owners that can move (the containers you speak of) can be loaded on trucks and be in any other place in 12-36 hours, internationally in 14-30 days

Yeah the biggest pool more or less is foundry.

They are commercial you need to have at least 20ph to join them.

That would be about 100 S21 units which would burn 350kwatts an hour.

basically a 20 foot container loaded to the brim.

Now many actual mines can have 100 of these containers burning 35000 kwatts or 35 mega watts.

There are huge farms in Texas not pools. They help stabilize the Texas power grid.

When Texas needs a lot of power for ac in the summer they shut the gear off and get paid to do so.

The fear that btc will be owned by the government is just dumb as it is already owned.

a mining pool is just a piece of software(node with extra scripts(stratum)). it is not a facility
dont confuse mining pools vs asic farms

I do sadly have the same intuition.  I think true Bitcoiners will face some tough times soon.  It all seems like things are getting better for Bitcoin but I think behind the curtains a really bad bullet is being loaded up for us.

Now the question is What is next?  What do we do?  Bitcoin gets Censorship.  Anonymity becomes mainly taboo.  What is next for us, how do we fight this?  Is it just over then, or is there a way we can continue to escape?

I read an article this morning that discussed that many Chinese miners have started setting up shop in Ethiopia, following the country's favorable electricity prices and the fact that they made Bitcoin mining legal in 2022. A lot of the energy they use comes from hydropower, though. It only shows that there are alternatives, unless these countries become pressured by the elitists from the West to apply certain regulations and do things their way, or else...   

Some Chinese people migrated to Georgia after the mining ban but to be fair, BitFury has total dominance on Bitcoin mining in this country.

People wanted massive adoption and people were celebrating when companies were accepting bitcoin payment. Sadly, massive adoption can't come without cost and the cost is sacrificing privacy.

Even young fellas can't understand what Bitcoin, blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies are in overall. Does anyone really think that 81 year old Biden has any idea about Bitcoin and mining? When he hears mining, he probably thinks about the extraction of minerals and materials from the Earth's surface.

The fact that he is in that position puts all the blame on him, specially since nobody forced him to run for president 4 years ago despite being just as senile as he is today.

As for the second part, I have to say with changing presidents the laws don't change. In fact a lot of things remain the same. Take the gun laws and its related mess, they don't change no matter who's in office. They can't even change such things.
It's going to be the same with Bitcoin, if they feel like they need to move ahead with restrictions, they will move ahead and it won't change after Biden is out...

All of that are unnecessary unless they want to let us know that Bitcoin is no more of the potential of self custodian or that the Bitcoin miners and holders are no more safe in the hands of the US government.
Or maybe I should assume the US government wants to implement taxation on the Bitcoin miners as a caused of being so attracted with greeds or should I called that to be oppression?
I just hope things goes well that Bitcoin would be reliable, self custodian with a good reputation as usual.

Biden doesn't understand much about anything really, not anymore at least but he does basically decide on who should know more about what, which means he builds his team, then the rest is done by others. You can't put the blame on him at this point, this is more about his team, people who are in position to do these things and that is what hurts them the most.

I understand that it is going to be a tough decision to make, and I get that we are going to end up with a trouble that would not be all that easy to handle if the people in power do not want this. All in all, governments are in power for a while, and they will change, so that means we are going to end up with something that will be either good, or bad and temporary.

Meh, i hope that at least someone will ignore that poll. Im sure that they will seize miners sooner or later

Biden isn't the biggest problem. He has other concerns to worry about. Not going completely senile is one of them. Joking aside, he needs to convince the nation to give him another mandate, and I don't think that's going very well. Regarding Bitcoin, the bigger danger are the people he trusts that whisper in his ear. That's the real danger. He is just the one giving the final go ahead with his signature. 

Their goal is to attack bitcoin from every angle and you have to realize why this is being done.

Biden doesn't understand bitcoin, this is too much for his old head, so he's given up and allowed "his people" to do what they want in this matter. These people struck deals with banks who want to slow bitcoin as much as possible. At first the goal was to ban bitcoin, but all the attempts to do so were stopped early. Their latest failed achievement was an act that was supposed to make all the wallet providers assign addresses to names of their clients, which was so ridiculous that it exposed their true intentions and lack of knowledge. It's of course impossible for wallet providers to make clients disclose their private information every time they make a new address and if introduced such act would mean that no wallet software would be available for US citizens. Unless... that's exactly what they wanted. They knew how this works and wanted to slip a ban through the Congress, thinking that not enough people will notice what it really is.

Time is running out for Biden and his team of crooks though. The awareness is rising among politicians and there's no way they can get the majority to ban wallets or mining in the US at this point.

If you think about it, that's the way it already is. KYC and AML procedures are already a part of Bitcoin because most of the buying and selling takes place on centralized service providers. It's no different with crypto debit cards that allow convenient exchange of crypto for fiat. The anonymous and private transactions are the minority.

Sure, they are registered businesses but I don't think the bolded information was needed for them to start their operations. Your power distributor needs to know how much electricity you need, not the government. And the government surely didn't need to know who your provider is, but now they want to.

If they "ban" mining, the miners would definitely migrate but if it is only restrictions and regulations, it is less likely. What has happened before is the first case, like in China when they "banned" mining, the miners migrated. What is happening now is the second case.

You see, packing everything up and moving it to another country with different mining regulations, different tax laws and having to find a reliable power source there is not an easy task for miners to just pack up and leave each time there were some "restrictions".

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.   

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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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...

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.

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.

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.

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.       

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.

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.

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

This is not surprising. Especially when mainstream governments have long criticized the "high energy consumption" of PoW. The Biden administration in the US, has been most critical about Bitcoin and crypto in general. I think this has to do with countries (eg: Russia) using crypto to avoid sanctions. Now it wants to regulate the industry heavily to prevent this from happening. Or should I say, prevent people from enjoying the full benefits Bitcoin provides.

Fortunately, the current US government initiative only applies to companies. Individuals won't have to worry about mining at home in the timebeing. If things get "tough", there's nothing stopping anyone from creating their own mining hardware. Bitcoin's decentralized, so what can go wrong?

I don't think the US will go that far. Let's keep the illusion of freedom alive, shall we?! There are other ways to get what you want without taking over the business directly. You begin with pressure and threats. You tell them they will face downtime, sanctions, heavy regulation, and scrutiny. And then you change it up and say, we can either do it the hard way or the easy way. The easier way is that we forget about everything we just threatened you with, but you start running your business the way we want you to. You know, for the sake of national security?! That means, censoring what we don't like and promoting and pushing the agendas we tell you to.

If the Venezuelan government did this, it's not so far-fetched that all governments would also do the same so they could all control the network thus effectively censoring the transactions. First, they hate Bitcoin but now they wanna take over Bitcoin.

There was an article that came out a week ago that one of the pools already censored a transaction. If they succeed so, there goes the decentralization we hope to continue.

I missed your thread. I checked with similar headings as in the original article and didn't find anything.


Keep in mind though that moving a mining operation with possibly tens of thousands of ASIC miners and other hardware isn't like packing a suitcase to go on a holiday. Plus, some people might not want to move because their life and that of their families might be seriously impacted.


Imagine how much harm America's sweetheart, Taylor Swift and her private jet have caused the environment in recent months.   


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. 

Because something like Bitcoin could be a threat to them and their position in society. Censorship-resistance, and self-custody - a significant feature that gives the user self-sovereignty, has the potential to weaken political strongholds. But the current generation of politicians are still in denial, and they still want to control Bitcoin because they simply don't understand it. Haha. I believe the next generation of politicians might be more like El Salvador's president.

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.

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Tell me what does Israel even have that is not "made in the USA" or is it sponsored with their money? As things stand, it turns out that Israel, without US military assistance, could not defeat an enemy that does not have tanks, military planes, or any modern weapons systems.

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.

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.

I think they need to tap in to all availlable tax resources to fund the real wars that they are funding. Take the "Iron Dome" in Israel for instance... it was funded by the US Government. (They are currently funding many proxy wars in other countries)

They might also make sure that they are not funding their enemies wars on their own soil. (Bitcoin is borderless, so mining can easily be used to fund wars with almost anonymous origin.... freshly mined coins have not been in circulation and are harder to trace)

On paper there is nothing unusual about this. A lot of countries have already done this, in fact US is too late to make this kind of move. With energy crisis over the past couple of years, more countries are making such moves with strict regulations.
Not only there is a need to keep an eye on this kind of energy consumption but also the governments want a "source of revenue" as they smell taxes!

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.

They also contradicted themselves since PoS doesn't consume electricity to be "threatening grid stability"!


The government isn't taxing the energy again, they are taxing the new business that is converting that energy into money and has a revenue.

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


i understand some are scared of the privacy of having to register their name and location of their asics
but with the REASON for the survey being about the grid stability i was more talking about the "stability" side

which bitcoin is stable. asics run 24/7 at 3kw an hour each(2.5m units world wide(maybe 1.5m units us))..
unlike EV spontaneous 75kw in 20 minutes fast charge unpredicably for 2.5m units in just america

Bitcoin become too big to be ignored.

They are getting themselves ready to tax miners imo.
Soon some new regulations will show up, and they will tax miners (which do make a lot of money, and make way too much in the past as bitcoin price skyrocket)

This is what governments do... tax



They know who owns every car in the country..

here's the thing though

when asic farms contact energy suppliers and buy mass energy contracts of XXXMW.. the energy suppliers, knowing the grid and SUPPLIES(its in their name) would not accept contracts if there was a risk to "grid stability"

its also funny how cars need hundreds of kw per charge are not being questioned

think about it 75kw is only a couple hundred miles car, which at 50mph is only 4 hours total travel
yet an asic at 3kw is 72kw is 24 hours constant use

strange how bitcoin (only 2.5m units in the world hashing(far less in just US)) is being treated more evil than ev cars which has 2.5m in just the US

US gov has no problem with a EV sucking 75kw in 20 minutes fast charge, in rotation per location
but thinks 3kw per hour is the killer of grid stability

asic farms are a stable grid draw of electric,
EV charging stations are the unstable unpredictable large draw in short time, no pattern risk

This must be one of the biggest encroachments on privacy and the free market as rightly pointed out in the article.  How can it even happen in practice?  Maybe the government of my country is a little slow if I had to compare it with the US, but how realistic is it to expect from thousands of miners across your nation to accept and comply with this utopia?


How is the bull run related?  This action encourages the miners to move their operations outside the US.

The question is, why would they do that? The answer to that is simple, in my opinion, because they know that the bull run for Bitcoin is coming, but when it turns bearish again, they will stop that too. Such styles of a country's government are not new to us.

Most people know that when the government is in charge, there will definitely be manipulation in such scenarios. And for me, if I were a miner, I would not do it or allow it to be given or sold to the government. I am not stupid enough to do it because, for sure, they have bad intentions in that matter.

Most of the overall network's hashrate is generated by miners who mine in the U.S., so a problem with BTC mining in the U.S. is a problem for the network. You can say miners may move to other locations, but it is not so easy to do that, due to the cost of electricity, logistics and personal reasons.

However, the purpose of this attack isn't for miners to pack up and look for other locations, i believe it is an attack on privacy, both for the miners themselves and soon for the tx's they mine, because they could make it a requirement that miners should not mine and should censor tx's from blacklisted or sanctioned addresses.

I already read this news a few days back on the ALTT forum but did not see it from your eyes, I mean biden really wants to make BTC fully centralized or wants to control it somehow, but I did not realize the green energy and saving electricity or to maintain power station's supply types statements are just a cover-up while the real target is BTC and I have read many topics made on this forum that asks " what happens if a war started and US wants US citizens to stop mining, or using BTC".

Your concerns/points also raise the same question, so my answer will be that's the problem of US and US citizens, we are not being affected by it, I mean such steps made by US authorities will force mining operations to leave the country and they will lose the revenue that they generate from taxation.

People were already starting their mining operations in their countries with cheap electricity and now this will make force them to move more quickly.

After knowing the density of indirect rule of this government or the US as whole in my country I kept wondering to myself what is really the intention of this few people who calls themselves the elites.

The government under the leadership of this elites are just increasingly trying to control the life of everyone directly or indirectly. what exactly are all this details that are required from miners going to do for them, the taxes people pay isn't enough for them, now it's to indirectly control Bitcoin related stuffs that is their sole desire. I pity the citizens of the US who discriminate others who migrates to the US for greener pastures, because if they start getting informed on how they have been manipulated for so long now they will seek freedom or even what to leave such places.

Imagine the US government succeeding with this enactments and as a result makes a rule that will seem so hard for bitcoin miners to keep mining Bitcoin, that will be a catastrophe in the Bitcoin world and with this intention can indirectly manipulate the market to their favour.

All I wish is for all their indirect fights against Bitcoin to fail but anyways we will keep watching and playing our role in Bitcoin for it to keep getting stronger.

The first thing that comes my mind is not to trust this governments, because they have their own way of manipulating things for their own sake and benefits, in this, miners should not rejoice because there's no any benefits of friendship a lion has to do with a dog than to consume it, they are trying to lay a model as standard for them to follow after which they have all been regulated, the miners may first think about all these as for their own interest whereas not.

We have been discussing something similar to this. You can see it here if you click on this link https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.63601670

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.

I just came across this article, and it seems it hasn't been discussed here. The Biden Administration Wants To Create A Registry Of Bitcoin Miners
My first thought: What could possibly go wrong with a war-hungry and war-supporting government, which is in great debt to have an updated list of all Bitcoin mining operations on its soil? It could perhaps come in handy if a war on Bitcoin is declared or new revenue sources need to be found to finance the pursuit of freedom and democracy. 

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Let's get to it. 



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