Unless you are suggesting taxing crypto itself, in which case… sure!
In other words, the amount it takes in can be given back to the average person -- in forms of tax rebates, investment in public transit, education, whatever. In an ideal world a carbon tax would have no adverse impact on lower and middle class people.
I should also add that in that world higher electricity cost due to carbon tax is a good thing -- it'll help carbon-neutral sources of energy to compete and replace the more dirty forms. Which is exactly what we want.
But perhaps more importantly, you wouldn't be taxed because others are using electricity for virtual money. You would be taxed because your carbon emissions are causing climate change, and to encourage you to reduce energy usage where possible.
[1] - https://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-pricing-studies/
Also, you can make the tax progressive so that the high consumers can pay much more.
All money has a cost on society. You have to do something to maintain its value. You don't think wars in the middle east -- to maintain the petrodollar -- have an environmental impact?
And when it isn't oil it'll be fights over germanium and lithium veins.
If you actually cared to do more than sit in a chair -- advocating random things you didn't research -- you'd be advocating for Thorium power. Thorium is nearly as abundant as lead -- it's all over the place -- and it's much more clean and less dangerous than even solar or wind.
What if we want to decide that we want to minimise carbon, but some use of energy is preferable (for instance consumer/home use) to bootstrapping new financial products?
and that's where the price signals what is preferable. The correct allocation of energy should be based on the price people are willing to pay for the energy. Like any other commodity.
Why? Why is that 'correct'? Why would we not want to ensure the population has affordable energy for home use, but others seeking to make a profit from it rather than use it for basic needs pay more?
You phrase your reply as some sort of moral absolute, but it's nothing of the sort.
Because we already have the former and we don't need the latter.
A carbon tax with a dividend doesn't make life harder for lower income people, because they already have below-average energy consumption (wealthier people have bigger houses that need more heat etc.) and as a result the dividend would be larger than what they pay in tax.
But you still want them to have good incentives. If they can use the dividend to switch to solar or buy an electric car, you want them to do this, because that's the whole point.
Meanwhile there is no reason to charge profit-seeking enterprises more than the true cost of their usage, because all that's doing is inhibiting economically productive activity. Aluminum smelting uses a tremendous amount of electricity, but what you want is to cause them to switch to non-carbon electrical generation, not to shut down operations.
That's the point - it's perfectly fine for a society to decide what energy can and can't be used for, because we don't live in a time when we have infinite, environmentally neutral power available to us.
An obvious example is the existence of pseudonymous digital payments. Given that cryptocurrency already exists, and will continue to exist for all illicit activities even if you ban it, you might as well let people open numbered accounts at a bank.
Do this for any other advantage cryptocurrency has over the existing banking system and there is no more demand for cryptocurrency. And without demand, the price crashes and people stop burning coal to mine it.
