Tim Totten on Nostr: A few days ago, I posted that the White House has stooped to a new low, trotting out ...
A few days ago, I posted that the White House has stooped to a new low, trotting out long-proven false narratives to justify their latest attack on #Bitcoin. I didn't sufficiently provide background or citations to what they are now proposing, or why it's such bad public policy. Some friends asked for more detail, and I apologize I haven't had time to respond adequately until now.
First, President Biden signed an Executive Order that, inter alia, required the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to produce a report on the climate and energy implications of crypto assets. Because Bitcoin mining is far and away the largest component of energy usage in the "crypto asset" space, we all assumed (correctly, it turns out), that this would be the primary focus.
So OSTP dutifully dug in and began uncovering all the available research on this topic. They met with lots of experts and "experts" covering every angle. This included quite a few experts who were able to document serious, even fatal, flaws in much of the research. Sadly they didn't do any actual work on their own (which is critically needed if we're going to maximize the effectiveness of public policy).
In any case, OSTP published their report here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/09-2022-Crypto-Assets-and-Climate-Report.pdf
The report ended up being a ridiculously bad hit piece. It was very clear that OSTP had been told in advance what conclusions to come to, and in order to reach those false conclusions, they had to rely almost entirely on the results of previous non-academic, biased studies that have been completely debunked. The data are wrong. The narratives are complete nonsense. The "resesrch" completely fails to meet any minimal standard of academic rigor. And OSTP was shown this repeatedly. Yet they completely ignored all the real evidence, and based their conclusions entirely on the fatally flawed work that could be used to support the political narrative they were told to support.
And that political narrative is VERY bad for the United States. Not just a neutral thing, but outright damaging to the country. Nic Carter does a great job of explaining all this here, while completely destroying the OSTP report:
https://medium.com/@nic__carter/comments-on-the-white-house-report-on-the-climate-implications-of-crypto-mining-8d65d30ec942
Now cut to budget fight season, and the White House doubled down on all the false narratives and predictably announced their completely ridiculous new proposed "DAME tax" on Bitcoin mining:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2023/05/02/cost-of-cryptomining-dame-tax/
[As a side note, how did no one get fired for that ridiculously bad name? I mean I thought that word had been canceled in English, and the meaning in both Spanish and Japanese is hilarious in this context.]
Anyway, this is what spurred my post last week. I wish I could attribute this proposed tax to ignorance. But the White House has repeatedly been shown the falsity of their narratives on this topic. In fact, the tax policy they propose will clearly achieve the EXACT OPPOSITE OF their stated objectives.
So I can only conclude they are intentionally peddling this false drivel only to justify a political object that is very different from the made-up objectives they are claiming publicly. They have made up a fake problem, then proposed a fake solution that apparently targets some different goal.
Here is a good rebuttal of the DAME tax that covers all this much better:
https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/05/11/the-white-houses-bitcoin-mining-tax-undermines-itself/
At this point, I'll leave it for the reader to do his/her own further homework. Or don't. That's what the White House would prefer.
First, President Biden signed an Executive Order that, inter alia, required the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to produce a report on the climate and energy implications of crypto assets. Because Bitcoin mining is far and away the largest component of energy usage in the "crypto asset" space, we all assumed (correctly, it turns out), that this would be the primary focus.
So OSTP dutifully dug in and began uncovering all the available research on this topic. They met with lots of experts and "experts" covering every angle. This included quite a few experts who were able to document serious, even fatal, flaws in much of the research. Sadly they didn't do any actual work on their own (which is critically needed if we're going to maximize the effectiveness of public policy).
In any case, OSTP published their report here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/09-2022-Crypto-Assets-and-Climate-Report.pdf
The report ended up being a ridiculously bad hit piece. It was very clear that OSTP had been told in advance what conclusions to come to, and in order to reach those false conclusions, they had to rely almost entirely on the results of previous non-academic, biased studies that have been completely debunked. The data are wrong. The narratives are complete nonsense. The "resesrch" completely fails to meet any minimal standard of academic rigor. And OSTP was shown this repeatedly. Yet they completely ignored all the real evidence, and based their conclusions entirely on the fatally flawed work that could be used to support the political narrative they were told to support.
And that political narrative is VERY bad for the United States. Not just a neutral thing, but outright damaging to the country. Nic Carter does a great job of explaining all this here, while completely destroying the OSTP report:
https://medium.com/@nic__carter/comments-on-the-white-house-report-on-the-climate-implications-of-crypto-mining-8d65d30ec942
Now cut to budget fight season, and the White House doubled down on all the false narratives and predictably announced their completely ridiculous new proposed "DAME tax" on Bitcoin mining:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2023/05/02/cost-of-cryptomining-dame-tax/
[As a side note, how did no one get fired for that ridiculously bad name? I mean I thought that word had been canceled in English, and the meaning in both Spanish and Japanese is hilarious in this context.]
Anyway, this is what spurred my post last week. I wish I could attribute this proposed tax to ignorance. But the White House has repeatedly been shown the falsity of their narratives on this topic. In fact, the tax policy they propose will clearly achieve the EXACT OPPOSITE OF their stated objectives.
So I can only conclude they are intentionally peddling this false drivel only to justify a political object that is very different from the made-up objectives they are claiming publicly. They have made up a fake problem, then proposed a fake solution that apparently targets some different goal.
Here is a good rebuttal of the DAME tax that covers all this much better:
https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/05/11/the-white-houses-bitcoin-mining-tax-undermines-itself/
At this point, I'll leave it for the reader to do his/her own further homework. Or don't. That's what the White House would prefer.