If Greenidge is any indication, the real conversation we can have around bitcoin mining and class is increasingly consumed by another conflict: the Culture War. I have said for a while, perhaps because it is too reductionist, that bitcoin will be a red-blue issue in the US, with Republicans increasingly endorsing it and Democrats refusing. Although the network itself will likely always remain “credibly neutral,” the way we think about it, and politicize it, will fall along predictable lines. Many subjects traveled that way. Before climate change became a wedge issue in American politics, for example, it was a relatively small issue that non-partisan politicians agreed on what needed to be done.
