Michael Saylor defends Bitcoin and Proof-of-Work
Bitcoin advocate Michael Saylor believes concerns about Bitcoin mining's environmental impact are propaganda from proof-of-stake lobbyists.
Bitcoin advocate Michael Saylor believes concerns about Bitcoin mining's environmental impact are propaganda from proof-of-stake lobbyists.
Michael Saylor, the former MicroStrategy CEO and a founding member of the Bitcoin lobby group Bitcoin Mining Council, published a letter offering his take on the environmental issues around Bitcoin. He finds the recent debates about Bitcoin's energy intensity surprisingly blown out of proportion. In fact, he says the ongoing discussion is part of the lobbying by competing proof-of-stake crypto projects.
Proof-of-Work ban
Saylor's letter came a few days after the U.S. government released a report examining the climate impact of the crypto industry. The authors of the report even considered banning the proof-of-work consensus mechanism used by Bitcoin because of its high energy intensity. Saylor clearly disagrees.
For him, Bitcoin's contribution to climate change is nothing more than a rounding error when looked at globally. A full "99.92 percent of global CO2 emissions" is due to industrial use and other purposes besides Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin is neither the problem nor the solution for reducing emissions.
A study from the Bitcoin Mining Council mentioned earlier would back him up. It states that almost 60 percent of the energy sources for Bitcoin mining reportedly come from renewable energy sources. Saylor even believes mining the digital coin using the proof-of-work method could yield environmental benefits. For example by using mines at locations of "stranded" energy sources, such as methane.
"Proof-of-Stake Lobby"
His critique of proof-of-stake proponents came a few hours before Ethereum's Merge, the shift of the world's second-largest blockchain from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. The letter reads, in places, like a blow to the currently second-place blockchain.
In recent months, Ethereum developers and the community have highlighted the dramatic drop in energy use after the switch. Saylor calls such passive references to Bitcoin mining's energy intensity "guerrilla marketing." To him, it's an attempt by crypto promoters and lobbyists to distract politicians, regulators, and the public from the uncomfortable truth that proof-of-stake crypto assets are basically unregistered securities.
Michael Saylor, a self-proclaimed Bitcoin maximalist, has protested Ethereum on many occasions. He argues the project should be treated as a security and regulated accordingly because of its lack of decentralization. Other maximalists, like Bitcoin influencer PlanB, known for his (sometimes discredited) stock-to-flow model, were also skeptical about Ethereum's new image.
