Crypto clash in Idaho: Can Bitcoin mining find a home in the Gem State?

It’s hard to say Idaho legislators are anti-technology, seeing as they recently made an elaborate deal with Meta to set up data centers in Kuna. Yet, two recent cryptocurrency bills and hopes for deeper relationships with Bitcoin mining companies were, for the time being, set back in the Gem State when government, private entities, and out-of-state players failed to negotiate mutually beneficial solutions to questions of energy prices.

Some have wondered in the fallout if it’s not technology but Bitcoin that is the problem for politicians because the state has indeed made other deals with Big Tech work.

Bills 1295 and 585, respectively, sought to expand certain rights related to distributed ledger technology and exempt crypto miners from “discriminatory” local ordinances that also do not apply to data centers.

Are free-market advocates seeking to restrict private electric companies' abilities from charging crypto miners what they want? Utilities are concerned about investing in the infrastructure necessary to accommodate mining operations because of the speculative nature of the product.

Meta’s deal with the state included $70 million for new water and sewage systems in the city of Kuna, where the proposed operation was established. Additional concessions/promises to the state included various “renewable energy” and jobs commitments.

The existing protocols in Idaho grant sales-tax exemption to data centers if they invest $250 million or more and create at least 30 local jobs. The Meta data center in Kuna invested $800 million and foresees adding 100 new jobs.

For the moment, Idaho, in conjunction with its Public Utilities Commission, has concluded that cryptocurrency mining operations are subject to price instability and do not warrant the same cooperation or exemption from Idaho regulators.

Public Utilities Commission and Idaho Power likely will not strike some deal without third-party intervention. Maybe the push here in Idaho to crack wide the crypto game is just too ambitious now.

At the time of this writing, it’s apparent at almost every political and economic level that the game is on pause. We need to see the results of the presidential election, of course, but then we need to see what promises do and do not manifest. The Trump train has of late signaled strong support for Bitcoin and related technologies, but which firms and personalities are tasked with implementation and how the fiat-regime summons out of the dark as countermeasures are legitimate questions.

A decentralized movement still needs to operate somewhere along the line in the real world. Electricity for crypto mining must be generated, harnessed, and applied to computational work, but unless there is an entirely autonomous infrastructure, Bitcoin miners, monks, and assorted adherents will persist in their dependence upon the tenuous (and collapsing) webs of finance (read: extant power structure).

Some other questions that the Idaho crypto mining legislative situation brings to the fore: Are Bitcoin miners eventually going to acquire land, infrastructure, and expertise enough to generate and distribute their own electricity? Will they be able to defend such efforts by lawfare, one presumes?

If not, we know what’s in store from a globalist point of view vis-a-vis crypto. It’s CBDC but centrally controlled and tied into absolutely every possible conceivable monetary leverage point. In this scenario where technology just fails to wriggle out of classic power dynamics, you will live to see Lovecraftian tax and fee horrors heretofore deemed impossible.

A visionary, just (state, local, or national) government could balance the public-private equation with some sort of citizen dividend scheme. A price structure scheme for crypto mining in Idaho eschewing typical Randian hyper-libertarian models in favor of public works and local, immediate reinvestments would go a great distance toward effecting the sort of high-minded ideals purported by crypto devotees while also securing again so much of the social capital already squandered in the past century.

Is this about establishing a tax on digital property? Section 63-602L seems to imply that Idaho should now commit to not taxing such property. Why stuff that into a bill ostensibly about barring private utility companies from creating and enforcing rate castes for different types of clients?

On the other hand, if we’re being realistic — if we do not embrace some sort of Randian path into the future of technology where some bold “founder” type is going to purchase his or her legal solution effectively — is Christianity a viable overlay by which a legislature could see to properly implement or manage such newfangled considerations as a digital, quasi-centralized currency (or is it a store of wealth or neither)?

In this case, are free-market advocates seeking to restrict private electric companies' abilities from charging crypto miners what they want? Utilities are concerned about investing in the infrastructure necessary to accommodate mining operations because of the speculative nature of the product. Isn’t that a legitimate concern when we see the stalling, the backroom dealing, and the depth of ignorance with respect to all things crypto from the highest levels?

It seems almost that the current tangle of public-private machinations we’ve experimented with may simply be outdated. Idaho is paused on the issue for the moment.