Biden Won’t Tax Crypto Out of Existence: Lummis

Senator Cynthia Lummis had harsh words for the Biden Administration’s idea to impose a 30% tax on electricity used by bitcoin miners. In a word, she rejected it completely.

“That isn’t going to happen,” Lummis told Chamber of Digital Commerce founder and CEO Perianne Boring at Bitcoin Miami last week. 

The Wyoming Republican revisited the issue Thursday, tweeting reports focused on her comments at the bitcoin-centric conference. 

“A 30% tax hike on any specific industry is a blatant attempt by the administration to pick winners and losers,” Lummis wrote. “I will not let President Biden tax the digital asset industry out of existence.”

At the conference, Lummis also seemed to hint that bitcoin miners will simply flee the US should the Biden Administration institute the Digital Asset Mining Energy (DAME) tax, saying that “miners can mine anywhere.”

This is a point that has been made by industry participants as well. Marathon Digital CEO Fred Thiel told Blockworks in early May that in that kind of tax environment, miners would have no choice but to go abroad. 

“We’re going to essentially make bitcoin mining unprofitable in the US. Then what you’re going to do is push it offshore,” Thiel said, talking about the tax. 

A conservative think tank didn’t pull any punches on the Biden Administration either and gave the DAME tax proposal a failing grade in a scathing mid-May piece. 

Industry members and conservatives aren’t the only ones attacking Biden on this, although much of it could be attributed to political grandstanding.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running for president as a Democrat, joined the dog pile right after the proposal was announced by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers on May 2, 2023. He called it a “mistake.”

“It is a mistake for the U.S. government to hobble the industry and drive innovation elsewhere. Biden’s proposed 30% tax on cryptocurrency mining is a bad idea,” Kennedy tweeted on May 3, 2023.

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