Re:Bitcoin miners are buying power plants
by snarf21 on Friday April 16, 2021 @09:07AM
(#26833392)
A carbon tax won't halt activity but it could cause the price to drop. If Bitcoin drops to $300, it is no longer profitable to mine. I agree that making it illegal would help. Main street would be loathe to depend on wire transfers to Hong Kong to transfer in/out. However, given Coinbase just went public, there will (unfortunately) be way too much political pressure to kill the segment.
[ Parent
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Why would the carbon tax drastically drop bitcoin price? If electricity price increases, the difficulty dicreases.
As far as the difficulty stays high enough to keep the network secure the markets don't have a reason to care.
The problem with the difficulty decreasing is that it depends on how much and how fast. It depends on how much the tax is relative to the cost to mine. Also, it could also politically be positioned as a "bitcoin tax" instead of a climate change thing to make it bi-partisan. I personally think these are the things that causes Main Street to move on. If all of the commoners sell their BTC the price will drop.