Global Warmists, Chris Larsen Launch Campaign Against Bitcoin Mining Over Unsubstantiated Climate Change Concerns

Keneci Channel

The crypto billionaire and CEO of failing crypto-payments company Ripple, is working with global warming alarmist groups to target Bitcoin mining over unsubstantiated climate change concerns.

The coalition which includes Greenpeace, Environmental Working Group and some local activist groups, this week, announced an ad blitz in left-wing media publications like New York Times and Politico, targeting Bitcoin miners and prominent figures in the Bitcoin community like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Ex-CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey.

The campaign is aimed at pressuring the Bitcoin community to agree to a change in the Proof of Work(PoW) feature -- the mechanism through which the Bitcoin blockchain processes and validates transactions and creates new coins. PoW is a core feature vital for blockchain security and decentralization. It is a key part of Bitcoin's value proposition.

With PoW, miners are competing to be first to finish a complex mathematical puzzle, an algorithm designed to verify transactions in the blockchain and generate new bitcoins as rewards.

The campaign hopes to persuade the Bitcoin community to switch to Proof of Stake(PoS). With PoS, the consensus algorithm decides on who validates the next block according to how many coins you hold, instead of miners cracking a complex mathematical puzzle.

The Bitcoin network requires energy for hashing -- the computer processing power expended in mining on the network. United States is responsible for nearly 40% of the network's global hash rate, as most of the mining is done in the country since China banned it last year.

Global warmists claim that the computing power used in Bitcoin mining is one of the biggest sources of pollution, a claim which has been thoroughly debunked. But it is based on this false claim that the far-left coalition launched its campaign this week.

“We are in this campaign for the long haul, but we are hoping -- particularly since Bitcoin is now being financed by entities and individuals who care about climate change -- that we can compel leadership to agree that this is a problem that needs to be addressed,” said Michael Brune, who is in charge of the campaign, and was a long-time executive director of the Sierra Club before resigning last year. “Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, PayPal, Venmo, Fidelity -- there are lots of companies we anticipate will be helpful to this effort.”

The so-called “Change the Code, Not the Climate” campaign has already reached out to a dozen key people and corporations, who have pledged so-called Environmental, Social and Governance, or ESG, compliance, a parasitic self-styled woke standard pushed by activist investors on Wall Street.

Bitcoin’s main rival, Ethereum, is readying to switch from PoW to PoS, which global warmists claim will cut its energy consumption by 99% and make it more environmental friendly.

“Now with Ethereum changing, Bitcoin really is the outlier,” Larsen said. “Some of the newer protocols -- Solana, Cardano -- are built on low energy.” The billionaire said he’s put in $5 million to fund the campaign, partly because he feels that Bitcoin won’t continue to enjoy investors’ support unless it changes.

“I want to see Bitcoin and Ethereum succeed,” said Larsen, who owns some Bitcoin and Ether, as well as Ripple-backed XRP.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Ripple, Larsen and another executive in 2020, alleging they “raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.” The case is expected to wrap up this year.

Larsen claimed he is not launching this campaign to bring down a rival cryptocurrency. “If I was concerned about Bitcoin as a competitor, probably the best thing I could do is let it continue on this path,” Larsen said. “This is just an unsustainable path.”

The Ripple CEO claims a soft or hard 'fork' of the Bitcoin software will fix the network’s power consumption issue.

The campaign credulously believes that about 50 key miners, crypto exchanges and core developers have the power to change Bitcoin’s code.

One problem? Being a decentralized network, to make such a change, a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, BIP, must be presented and 'voted on' in order to pass. Even then, such change will have to be agreed to and accepted by the general Bitcoin community -- tens of thousands of Bitcoin miners, node hosts and developers. Such consensus to move forward will take years to reach.

Even if reached, such an unlikely consensus would lead to a situation where Bitcoin would split into two blockchains: The original PoW one, and a new one following a different set of rules, maybe PoS. Regardless, the PoW blockchain would still exist and process transactions.

Another consideration: Profit motive. A change away from PoW to PoS would destroy income for miners, since they’d become obsolete.

Critics have pointed out that the campaign is doomed to fail just like others in the past. Remember the block size wars?