Carbon taxes also wouldn't make Bitcoin worthless. You can easily imagine Bitcoin mines powered by solar. Many already are, in order to capitalize on the cheap energy. The article posted in the OP is specious.

Solar power isn't necessarily free of externalities though. Once you run out of roofs to install them on, you then need to use up land.

The point is that Bitcoin isn't inherently carbon positive. It's carbon positivity depends on the power source used to mine it and carbon neutral power becomes cheaper and more available every day.

Deduce just a bit more, and see that I meant you can tax literally anything until it is worthless.

I think you already knew what I meant but just wanted to nitpick.

But that is absolutely not the point, and it is not a nitpick. The real argument is that Bitcoin has negative value if you include externalities, and that is not the case for most assets.

It's not a nitpick, he's referring to Pigovian Taxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax

It's obvious that you can tax anything by some amount to eat up the value.

He means if you tax it according to the amount of unaccounted-by-the-market negative value, it comes out negative.

Right, that's fair to say.

But the economist in OP is essentially ignoring where bitcoin actually get's it's value from and only focusing on it's electrical consumption.

Bitcoin means different things to different people. But many see it as the single best hedge against modern monetary policy.

The cost of releasing carbon into the atmosphere is there whether or not you price it into the market by use of a tax. Value is not limited to monetary value.