A Bit Green

A new campaign to reduce Bitcoin’s impact on climate change is underway, with some key voices speaking up to try and persuade “only 30 people” to change things and make a real difference. Here’s a summary:

• The ‘Change the code, not the climate’ campaign aims to pressure key industry leaders into moving over to a new consensus model
• They claim that mining Bitcoin is currently driven by fossil fuels and that not switching to a less-polluting model acts as an enabler for oil & gas companies
• The founders of the campaign include Greenpeace and Ripple co-founder and executive chairman Chris Larsen.
• They stated that if “the key miners, exchanges and core developers who build and contribute to Bitcoin’s code agreed to reinvent proof-of-work mining or move to a low energy protocol, Bitcoin would stop polluting the planet”.
• Elon Musk joined Greenpeace last year when he stopped accepting Bitcoin as payment, citing environmental concerns.
• Larsen added that with Ethereum changing to proof of stake, Bitcoin is really the outlier, given that Solana and Cardano are also on low-energy networks.

It’s worth noting, however, that the switch would represent a conflict of interest for miners, who hold vast amounts of Bitcoin and have sunk costs inexpensive equipment that would rapidly lose value should such a move occur.