Elon Musk’s criticism of the Bitcoin ecological balance caused the crypto market to collapse. However, the climate debate also has positive consequences.
At the beginning of the year, Elon Musk tweeted the bad news that Tesla can no longer be bought with Bitcoin. Musk justified his decision with the fact that digital gold does not use sustainable energy in mining. Among other things, this message was the trigger for a crashing downward trend for the markets. A few months later, the situation in the crypto market has eased worldwide. After a short dry spell, Ethereum and Co. even started a new rally recently. But there were not only exciting developments in the markets. There were also changes in the processes in the crypto mining scene after Musk’s criticism.
One company that may have taken Elon Musk’s words to heart is Argo Blockchain. On August 17th, Argo announced that it would be the world’s first publicly traded Bitcoin mining company to be climate positive. Peter Wall, CEO of Argo, sees his company as part of a transformation process in the mining industry:
We pride ourselves on being the first publicly traded Bitcoin mining company to be climate positive and we continue to focus on encouraging other companies to join us. In addition, we wanted to make our climate strategy public, hoping to encourage collaboration, input and dialogue between all companies to create a climate-positive environment.
The classification is based on the system of the three scope emission levels. After Carbon Trust Organization The three emission scopes can be classified as follows: Scope 1: fuel combustion, company vehicles, Scope 2: purchased electricity, heat and steam, Scope 3: purchased goods and services, business travel, waste disposal and investments.
In this case, climate-neutral means that a company measures all of its emissions that arise from the three scope levels and offsets them. For example, through CO₂ certificates or other measures that reduce CO₂ emissions. In the case of Argo Blockchain, the company even goes one step further and virtually “removes” CO₂ from the atmosphere and thus becomes climate-positive.
Just greenwashing?
Not only Argo Blockchain tries to mine Bitcoin sustainably. Green & clean bitcoins are increasingly becoming a market advantage to advertise with. Because mining customers are also becoming more and more aware of the sustainability of Bitcoins, they also see the Bitcoin miner as a market advantage.
Elon Musk’s message that he no longer wants to accept Bitcoin may not have earned him a lot of sympathy points. But with his criticism of BTC’s electricity consumption, he set a lasting and important impetus for the mining industry. Many Bitcoin miners are trying to get greener and use sustainable energy sources.
But is it only greenwashing that the mining companies do here? Perhaps the crypto miners Elon Musk and the other Bitcoin critics want to demonstrate that they do not mine Bitcoin that dirty. At the moment there are other companies that have set themselves the goal of a sustainable Bitcoin mining process, for example Iris Energy. In any case, the trend towards sustainable Bitcoin is good news for the crypto world.