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Culture Re-View: One of eight attempts on Queen Victoria’s life is made in London

On 30 May, 1842, Queen Victoria survived the second attempt on her life in as many days.

Many monarchs manage to avoid attempts on their lives for their entire reign, but Queen Victoria was not so lucky.

On 29 May, the British monarch was returning to Buckingham Palace after a church service with her beloved husband Prince Albert beside her in the royal carriage. Hiding as the horse-drawn vehicle made its way down The Mall in London, John Francis, a 20-year-old cabinetmaker – described by Albert as “a little, swarthy, ill-looking radical” pointed a gun at the Queen.

When the weapon failed to fire, Francis fled the scene and disappeared into crowds in nearby Green Park.

Immediately after the event, the then-Prime Minister Robert Peel – widely regarded as the father of modern British policing – agreed to help in identifying the culprit.

Clearly, that wasn’t enough as, when Victoria and Albert decided to ride out again the next day, escorted by only two outrider equerries, John Francis took his chance at killing the monarch once again.

While some may say the decision was foolish, the famously stubborn Queen Victoria refused to be confined to Buckingham Palace until the perpetrator was caught, rightly believing the best way to flush him out was to leave.

The royal pair were no doubt nervous but, unbeknownst to Francis, the crowds watching the royal pair pass by were infiltrated with plain-clothed Metropolitan police officers. After firing his gun and missing – again – the attempted-killer was wrestled to the ground by law enforcement, just five paces away from the carriage containing Victoria and Albert.

The hapless would-be-assassin was initially sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered but the Queen later showed mercy towards him, commuting the sentence to banishment for life. Francis lived out the rest of his 63 years in Australia, remaining there until his death in 1885.

Remarkably, Francis’ two attempts on the Queen’s life were not isolated incidents.

Just two years before, in June 1840, 18-year-old barkeep Edward Oxford fired his duelling pistol at Victoria, who was four months pregnant with her first child, also called Victoria. Just outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, Oxford fired twice at the monarch but missed both times – the second down to Victoria’s quick decision to duck from the assailant.

After the attack, a crowd surrounded the shooter and tackled him to the ground, while Victoria and Albert continued on their planned journey to Hyde Park. At the time, Prince Albert wrote, “We took a short drive through the park, partly to give Victoria a little air, partly also to show the public that we had not, on account of what had happened, lost all confidence in them”.

Edward Oxford, said to be seeking notoriety, was found guilty but insane and spent 24 years in an asylum, later to be deported to Australia.

Despite the concerning attacks, a further five attempts were made on the Queen’s life over her 63 year rule.

Just five weeks later, 17-year-old John William Bean, who was suffering from spinal deformity and was desperate for a new life – even if that meant a life in jail – also shot at the monarch. After his attempt was foiled, he was sentenced to 18 months of hard labour.

Possibly due to increased security around the Queen, the attempted assassinations became much further spaced out, with shots fired in 1849, 1872 and 1882. Only in 1850 did an assailant use something other than a gun while trying to kill Victoria – and, interestingly, it was the only occasion in which she was actually hurt.

On 27 June that year, former British Army officer Robert Pate, who struggled with his mental health and was widely known for his manic behaviour, approached the Queen outside Cambridge House in central London, striking her on the forehead with his lightweight cane.

As the crowd dealt with Pate, Victoria found her footing and told onlookers, “I am not hurt” – despite the bruising and black eye that were beginning to show on her face.

Robert Pate was sentenced to seven years in the penal then-colony of Van Diemen’s Land, now known as Tasmania.

Despite the numerous attempts on Queen Victoria’s life, she lived to the ripe old age of 81, dying at her residence on the Isle of Wight 22 January 1901. Her reign was longer than any of her predecessors and was only surpassed last year by Queen Elizabeth II, who spent 70 years and 214 days on the British throne.

Welcome, Crypto, to the Fiery Cauldron of U.S. Presidential Politics

Before the push for the White House really gets rolling, digital assets – including bitcoins and CBDCs – are being hefted as ideological effigies, but will it matter?

Whether the crypto industry wants the spotlight or not, digital assets are among the earliest talking points in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, with the most prominent of the new candidates even invoking bitcoins in his campaign opener as evidence of President Joe Biden’s missteps.

In an election in which the heaviest fireworks will likely be seen on the side of the Republican challengers, former President Donald Trump – occupying the role as Biden’s leading nemesis – is himself facing an early-days threat from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who immediately staked out crypto as a kind of political shorthand.

“The current regime, clearly, has it out for Bitcoin,” DeSantis said from his campaign’s Twitter Spaces launch pad, using crypto to represent innovation and personal freedom. “Bitcoin represents a threat to them, they’re trying to regulate it out of existence.”

If digital assets keep figuring into presidential politics, they’ll likely feature as a stand-in to illustrate the perceived abuses of the federal government, according to industry insiders and political experts. But the attention may not contribute to the policy progress crypto businesses crave, because the sector is waiting for comprehensive rules, not political sentiments.

So far, Biden’s administration is being accused of squeezing emerging crypto businesses and trying to set up a central bank digital currency (CBDC) to spy on citizens, according to DeSantis and one of Biden’s challengers from his own party, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

For DeSantis, his pro-crypto position also separates him from chief rival Trump. The digital assets views of the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 nomination have historically been rooted in distrust, with Trump having declared in 2019 that he was “not a fan” of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, “whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air.” However, more recently Trump profited from his own series of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), so his position remains murky.

Two weeks before DeSantis opened his campaign beside tech mogul Elon Musk, he sought to make a political moment out of his state’s “ban” of a U.S. CBDC. Experts in the commercial law Florida used to act against a potential digital dollar have said Florida’s effort isn’t a ban at all, but that might not matter for political supporters impressed by DeSantis’ zeal.

“He seems to understand that private solutions being developed in the crypto markets are likely to be superior, in part because they pose fewer risks to the individual liberty of the public,” said Dave Weisberger, CEO of CoinRoutes, a trading tech startup in DeSantis’ home state.

But DeSantis is generally vague about his defense of cryptocurrencies, and his remarks don’t seem to acknowledge they are online instruments that can operate outside the whims of sovereign states. When he says that Democrats – given another four years – will “probably end up killing it,” it seems to suggest the U.S. lawmakers would have more reach than they do, and that crypto won’t find homes in other global jurisdictions, such as in Europe.

“It’s more about how he’s trying to paint himself as a fresh face,” said Ron Hammond, director of government relations for the Blockchain Association in Washington. “He’s trying to say ‘I’m the younger gun here who’s trying to get something done.’”

In the know

A rival Republican candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, has argued the Florida governor doesn’t know the topic well. The biotech entrepreneur told CoinDesk he’s pro-Bitcoin because he sees it as a “decentralized alternative” to the U.S dollar, improving the country’s financial infrastructure by presenting “a source of competition to the existing system.” And he says he understands it much more than DeSantis.

Other notable Republican candidates, such as Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and his state’s former governor, Nikki Haley, have reserved comment on the financial movement. Despite his position on the Senate Banking Committee that could help decide U.S. crypto’s fate, Scott has taken the most neutral possible stance, saying lawmakers should take a “thoughtful, bipartisan and balanced approach” to overseeing the industry in the U.S.

Among the Democratic challengers to standard-bearer Biden, Kennedy – who also holds other views that overlap with Republican positions – is fervently pro-crypto.

“Cryptocurrencies, led by bitcoin, along with other crypto technologies are a major innovation engine,” Kennedy wrote in a tweet earlier this month. “It is a mistake for the U.S. government to hobble the industry and drive innovation elsewhere.”

The most popular of the pro-crypto candidates among voters, DeSantis, still trails well behind Trump in primary polling, but the fact that there are multiple candidates saying nice things about digital assets is a positive for some in the sector.

“We now have three presidential candidates, spanning both political parties, who explicitly support the digital asset industry,” CoinRoutes’ Weisberger said. “While Republicans are trying to make crypto a partisan issue, the industry itself doesn’t believe it should be, which is why the support from RFK Jr. is also potentially important.”

Biden is the only candidate with a federal record on digital assets. So far, his administration hasn’t set down any significant crypto policy, and the financial regulators he picked have taken a staunchly critical view of the industry. His Securities and Exchange Commission chief, Gary Gensler, may be the most antagonistic of the bunch, combating digital assets businesses in courtrooms and with his agency’s rule proposals. And the direct messages from Biden’s Department of the Treasury and his own White House have been increasingly suspicious of the industry.

Though it wasn’t a campaign remark, Biden, who last month formally announced

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Sweden Drives Final Nail Into Its Bitcoin Mining Industry With Tax Hike

The 6,000% increase in taxes per kilowatt hour of energy may “ultimately destroy the industry” in the country.

Sweden, the last remaining stronghold of bitcoin miners in Europe, is abolishing tax incentives for data centers in July – potentially putting the last nail in the coffin for the industry in the region.

Energy prices in Europe have spiked in the past year largely in part due to the war in Ukraine, driving out bitcoin miners. The northernmost regions of Norway and Sweden were some of the last areas where the industry was still profitable and operating – although the crowd had thinned out – as they offer an ideal environment for data centers; cool and home to cheap hydroelectricity.

But not even these remote parts of Europe remained unaffected from the energy crisis, which caused prices to increase and some miners to turn off their operations, at least partly, in 2022.

Energy prices started to normalize in 2023, but the upcoming tax will likely stop any new investment in Sweden, which is currently home to about 150 megawatts (MW) of mining. The tax will increase from SEK 0.006 ($0.0006) to SEK 0.36 ($0.035) per kilowatt hour (kWh) starting July of this year, according to the financial budget published in November 2022.

Based on the average electricity prices last year, the tax hike could bring the all-in energy cost to $0.093/kWh, said Jaran Mellerud, senior analyst at mining services firm Luxor Technologies. A MicroBT Whatsminer M30s, a moderately efficient and commonly used machine, would be at break-even point given current market conditions, he said.

Hive Blockchain (HIVE), a Canada-based miner with 25% of its energy capacity in Sweden as of the end of 2022, declined to comment on this story. CoinDesk couldn’t find an instance where Hive disclosed the tax hike explicitly in any of its filings. The firm has discussed its disagreement with Swedish Tax Authorities over $32.4 million in VAT that it thinks it should recover.

Norway, which hosts 250-300 MW of mining, also increased its taxes from $0.0086 to $0.015 per kWh in January, said Mellerud.

Not all hope is lost for Norway, as its energy is overall cheaper and the tax hike is more modest, Mellerud said. The industry will continue developing there, said Denis Rusinovich, co-founder of mining consulting firm Cryptocurrency Mining Group.

Looking for ways out

Sweden’s tax hike makes mining in the region “prohibitively expensive in Sweden and could ultimately destroy the industry,” said Mellerud, so bitcoin miners are looking for solutions.

Many miners are looking to diversify elsewhere, as the new tax will drastically reduce their profitability, said Enerhash CEO Daniel Jogg, who operates a site in Sweden. The tax also requires companies to pay in advance for a few months, which creates some serious cash constraints at a difficult time for the industry, he said.

Some miners could try to get through the tax hike by switching to self-mining instead of hosting others’ machines, said Rusinovich.

Others are looking at ways to get around the tax by reusing the heat produced in the data centers such that they are taxed as heat producers, Mellerud said.

Those packing up are also facing an uphill battle, said Rusinovich: “The market of potential buyers has completely dried up and there are only less than a handful of real buyers left.”

Broken trust

It is unclear whether Sweden’s new taxes were intended towards miners or the entire data center industry. The tax hike was proposed by the Swedish Ministry of Finance, which was also pushing for a ban on bitcoin mining in the European Union last year, Mellerud pointed out.

“This could be viewed as an attack on bitcoin mining,” he said.

In 2017, Sweden enacted a 98% tax cut for data centers, looking to attract businesses. Four years later, the industry hasn’t created the jobs the country was hoping for, and the macroeconomic environment has changed, said the budget report.

The energy crisis has increased electricity rates for households, and the tax cuts currently in place might actually be taking away energy from other, more job-creating industries in the manufacturing sector, said the budget.

Miners are disappointed by how the tax hike was rolled out, with what seemed like little notice or communication. Firms like Hive tout Sweden as a “stable” jurisdiction, where they don’t worry about abrupt unilateral changes in the regulatory regime.

Microsoft (MSFT), which also operates data centers in the region, has protested the measure’s abruptness, particularly given that the government had commissioned a report on the energy impact of data centers that wasn’t finished at the time of the tax hike decision, according to the budget.

There has been no official communication to the bitcoin miners active in the region, only a page on the tax authority’s website that was updated to show the change, said Rusinovich.

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That, plus the fact that the tax will be implemented in the middle of the calendar year, making it hard to plan ahead, has rubbed miners the wrong way. Companies can request a refund for any taxes levied before the start of July, a spokesperson for the Swedish tax agency said.

Enerhash will keep its operations in Sweden because they are still profitable, particularly given its geographic diversification, but they will not be investing additionally. Why would you invest there when the legal framework can change so abruptly, Jogg asked.

Edited by Nikhilesh De and Aoyon Ashraf.