Elon Musk is back on his feet and mentions Bitcoin again, this time in a positive way. The CEO of Tesla met with Bitcoin miners from North America.
According to his tweet, the miners pledged to publish the use of current and future renewable energy, and pledged to demand the same from miners around the world. His conclusion is in two words we have read before:
“Potentially promising”.
Words that those who follow Elon Musk have already read about Dogecoin in some previous tweets.
Facilitating the meeting was Michael Saylor. The CEO of Microstrategy explained what had happened:
Yesterday I was pleased to host a meeting between @elonmusk & the leading Bitcoin miners in North America. The miners have agreed to form the Bitcoin Mining Council to promote energy usage transparency & accelerate sustainability initiatives worldwide. https://t.co/EHgLZ9zvDK
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) May 24, 2021
The outcome of the meeting will be the formation of a Bitcoin Mining Council that will aim to promote transparency in energy use and accelerate the ecological transition in the world.
Taking part in the meeting were:
- Argo Blockchain,
- Blockcap,
- Core Scientific,
- Galaxy Digital,
- Hive Blockchain Technologies,
- Hut 8 Mining,
- Marathon Digital Holding,
- Riot Blockchain.
Mike Novogratz as CEO of Galaxy Digital also attended the meeting and said he was excited that Galaxy could be part of this process that will lead Bitcoin to be more sustainable.
Will Elon Musk control Bitcoin’s miners? Criticism
The community did not particularly appreciate this meeting and on Twitter, the sceptics were vocal.
The profile Documenting Bitcoin pointed out that:
“Closed door meetings do not typically have any good outcomes in #Bitcoin’s history”.
Marty Bent (author of Bitcoin-themed podcasts and newsletters) commented harshly:
“First, it’s a bit concerning that this group of people felt compelled to appease Elon Musk after a deranged tweet storm that proved without a shadow of a doubt that he does not understand Bitcoin and its Proof of Work consensus mechanism. The rush to gain his approval is a bit nauseating”.
Marty Bent also believes that a closed-door meeting with industries speaking on behalf of an entire industry does not bring anything positive and is also quite arrogant.
The fact that they want to plan for the use of renewable energy seems even more worrying, because, he explains:
“It sets the stage for social pressure that will lead to regulatory pressure that will lead to the subsidizing of certain energy mixes over others, which will inevitably lead to a massive misallocation of capital throughout the mining industry and potentially end in a scenario where this council attempts to bifurcate the network by selling “green” bitcoins at a premium over “dirty fossil fuel” bitcoins”.
This, according to Marty Bent has nothing to do with using green energy:
“It has everything to do with CONTROL”.
Control or not, Bitcoin’s price has seemed to benefit. After sinking in recent days, Bitcoin is back at $39,000. As always, BTC is dragging the whole sector, which is in positive territory.
However, an important issue remains: it is quite clear that the sector is too closely linked to the mood of Elon Musk.
