On May 3, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a presidential aspirant in the upcoming 2024 US elections, criticized Joe Biden's new proposal for the nation's budget to impose a 30% Digital Asset Mining Energy (DAME) excise tax on crypto miners. In his tweet, he clearly expressed his stance opposed to Biden's crypto policy, calling crypto technologies "a major innovation engine."
The official argument for the tax cited by The White House is "emerging risks" associated with "the economic and environmental costs of current practices for mining crypto assets." The White House blog post states, "Crypto mining 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 harm they impose on society."
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Among the problems associated with crypto mining, The White House cites pollution from electricity generation that "falls disproportionately on low-income neighborhoods and communities of color," while intensive energy consumption can significantly increase electricity prices for consumers, cause power outages, and even lead to safety hazards. In addition, The White House believes that local utilities face financial risks, as their investments in capacity expansion may prove unnecessary because "crypto mining is geographically mobile" and its business model has "unclear stability."
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The US president's solution to these problems is the DAME tax, which will impose payments on crypto miners equal to 30 percent of the cost of the electricity they consume.
Although Kennedy admits that Bitcoin consumes a lot of electricity, he believes the real reason The White House is trying to reduce crypto mining activity is to "suppress anything that threatens elite power structures." He points to other products, such as video games, that require a great amount of energy to develop and use and are not seen as a threat.
Kennedy also commented on another popular argument among crypto opponents, which is that such currencies encourage criminal activity. "Some advocate tight control of cryptocurrencies to prevent their use by criminals," Kennedy said in his tweet, explaining that "it isn't just criminals who want privacy. So do dissidents and ordinary citizens."
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"Governments harass their enemies and crush dissent by controlling bank accounts and payment platforms. Until we restore trust in government (a distant prospect), we need cash and crypto to ensure freedom," Kennedy added.
