The so-called American community of miners or Bitcoin Mining Council was created in response to massive criticism of the «bad environmental impact of BTC» at the suggestion of Elon Musk.
The day before, its representatives shared interesting information: according to the calculations of the organization’s experts, more than 56 percent of the electricity supplying the Bitcoin network is produced from renewable sources. Such a conclusion seemed dubious and caused distrust even on the part of the cryptocurrency community.
By tradition, let’s start with an explanation. The reason for the formation of this organization was indeed the statements of Elon Musk, whose Tesla company stopped accepting bitcoins as a means of payment for their cars. The official position of the automotive giant was that BTC miners use too much dirty electricity – that is, such that is added from non-renewable sources.
Soon after, Elon talked about his meetings with North American miners. The purpose of the event was not only to clarify the current situation with the production of the first cryptocurrency, but also to popularize the use of clean energy.
As a result, the already mentioned community of miners arose, and Elon Musk was not involved in it – at least officially. The members of the organization want to make the BTC mining industry cleaner. In the long term, this should improve the reputation of cryptocurrencies that use the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm with miners and a large amount of computing equipment on their network.
A few weeks after the start of the association, its representatives have already started talking about the purity of BTC mining. And other members of the community, quite predictably, doubted such rapid changes in a huge niche.
Does Bitcoin harm the environment?
First, the Bitcoin Mining Council is directly interested in the «good image» of the cryptocurrency, because this association includes BTC miners and large investors of the first cryptocurrency. In fact, all conclusions of the organization should be taken with a little skepticism, since it is beneficial for it to present Bitcoin in an underlined good light.
For example, the activity of the organization is actively promoted by the head of MicroStrategy Michael Sailor, whose company has already managed to accumulate more than 100 thousand bitcoins. Of course, the belief of the representatives of the giant in the first cryptocurrency is huge, because it has invested billions of dollars in it. However, this does not mean that they have no bias in the perception of the cryptocurrency market.
As proof of this, we can recall the same Sailor, who actively gives interviews to industry news portals. In one of the discussions, he noted that «there is no second best cryptocurrency» besides Bitcoin. That is, the investor does not even consider other coins, and this is a rather limited approach to participate in the niche.
Secondly, the results of the study itself were derived from a survey of miners who «allegedly own 32 percent of the total computing power of the network. » 67 percent of them reported on the use of predominantly «green» sources of electricity.
However, the survey itself was voluntary, that is, its participants could not disclose information about their business, Decrypt reports. It is logical to assume that those whose crypto farms operate at the expense of environmentally harmful power plants would prefer not to advertise this. And this also gives the right to doubt the information voiced.
The Bitcoin network currently consumes about 0.3 percent of all electricity generated in the world.
Here is a transcript of a conversation between representatives of the organization. We recommend that you look if you understand English by ear and want to understand the topic in more detail.
By comparison, in September 2020, the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance published its study, according to which only 39 percent of the electricity that powers the main cryptocurrency network is «green» .
This figure may increase in the near future, as a huge number of miners are now migrating from China, where the government has raided the industry. But it was in China that most of the miners were concentrated, whose crypto farms worked at the expense of coal-fired power plants.
However, relatively little time has passed since the beginning of the struggle of the Chinese government with miners. And this period of time is clearly not enough to so dramatically correct the situation in the industry, experts say.
The amount of hazardous waste from power plants, equivalent to the energy consumption of the BTC network, peaked a few months ago, said engineer Hass McCook. And it was the government of China that contributed to this with its bans. That is, in the long term, what is happening now in China may even have a positive effect on Bitcoin – the mining industry will become much more environmentally friendly, and the critics of the cryptocurrency will lose another argument against BTC .
We believe that sooner or later, the Bitcoin mining industry will really become «green», that is, it will use clean electricity. However, this moment will have to wait. Still, such changes require the participation of most BTC miners, and for them the changes will mean additional costs. It is not a fact that for many people the idea will be more valuable than their own earnings – and this position can also be understood.
