Not long ago, it was reported that Elon Musk was starting to ask bitcoin miners where they got their energy from as a means of better understanding who was using clean energy to extract coins and who was not.
Elon Musk Isn’t Putting His Mining Fears to Rest
Now, it appears Musk has initiated the first collection of conversations with these miners, and he is happy about the information he has received. This has ultimately sent bullish waves through the crypto space and the price of bitcoin has risen by more than $1,000 at press time, though there is still a lot of recuperating to do on the asset’s part.
It was announced in late March that Tesla – the electric car company Musk is famous for – would begin accepting bitcoin payments for goods and services. This put crypto fans on cloud nine, and many believed that if more companies followed suit, there would be nothing that could potentially end the bullish run that bitcoin had been enjoying for nearly one year.
However, it was not long after that Musk renounced this decision, claiming he had concerns about the mining process for bitcoin. Thus, he did not want to exacerbate the planetary hazards mining potentially presented. Musk took to Twitter to announce the following:
Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using bitcoin. We are concerned about the rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel. Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels, and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment.
A lot of crypto traders did not react well to this news, and bitcoin itself ultimately sunk into oblivion. At the time, it was trading in the mid-$50,000 range, though now it has lost close to $20,000 and is trading for about $38,000. Still, it appears the story is not quite over in that Elon Musk is not ready to give up on bitcoin altogether.
He took to social media to request that largescale bitcoin miners report on how much clean energy they were using to mine new units of bitcoin and cryptocurrency. He is now saying that many of the operators he has spoken to have agreed to publish data regarding their companies’ energy usage.
Taking a Stance
Initial talks between Musk and the miners were moderated by MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, whose company has purchased more than $2 billion in BTC since last August. He is now working with Musk and all those he spoke with to form what they are calling the Bitcoin Mining Council, which he says will “promote energy usage transparency and accelerate sustainability initiatives worldwide.”
According to Saylor, some of the world’s leading bitcoin companies have spoken with Musk including Marathon Digital Holdings, Riot Blockchain and Galaxy Digital Holdings.
