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Elon Musk Will Have ‘No Role’ in BTC Mining Council

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Elon Musk Will Have ‘No Role’ in BTC Mining Council

Elon Musk likes to keep himself busy—he cofounded PayPal, runs the multibillion dollar car company Tesla, and wants to “protect the future of consciousness by making life multi-planetary” through aerospace company SpaceX.

But galvanizing BTC miners toward a cleaner, more energy-efficient future won’t be on his to-do list—not formally, anyway.

The BTC Mining Council, a group of energy-conscious North American BTC mining companies first revealed by Musk in a tweet in late May, debuted today and clarified that Musk will have “no role” at the Council.

Musk’s involvement with the group appears to have begun and ended with the “educational call” that the Tesla CEO held with the group on May 24, which he described as “potentially promising.”

The man who orchestrated that meeting, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, announced the Council’s launch today in a tweet, describing the group as “a voluntary and open forum of BTC miners committed to the network and its core principles.” Saylor added: “We promote transparency, share best practices, and educate the public on the benefits of BTC and BTC mining.”

BTC mining is an energy-intensive process the requires large amounts of computational power. It’s how new Bitcoins are created and the network is sustained. Critics decry it as wasteful, while proponents say the benefits of decentralized, state-less money are worth it.

Musk, whose car company Tesla had purchased $1.5 billion worth of BTC in February, appeared to have been swayed by those critics when on May 12 he announced Tesla would no longer accept BTC as payment, citing environmental concerns. “We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for BTC mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” he said at the time.

The move shook the market. The price of BTC fell from $56,000 to $49,000 by that evening, a drop of 12.5%. BTC hasn’t traded above $50,000 since. Today, 1 BTC is worth around $35,000.

Inviting Musk to join the initial call with miners appears to have been Saylor’s way of extending an olive branch. Saylor’s MicroStrategy is heavily invested in BTC—it holds roughly $3.3 billion in BTC on its balance sheet, according to BTC Treasuries, and recently announced plans to buy a half billion more. Meanwhile, Musk’s tweets routinely move the BTC market—up or down—and he knows it.

Meanwhile, the BTC Mining Council, in its current form, may not do much to assuage BTC’s staunchest critics. The group, which some BTC adherents initially chastised as a centralized attempt to control the mining industry, won’t actually impose energy standards for its members: “The BMC is not designed to have ‘teeth’ or tell anyone what to do,” its website explains.

Rather, the Council encourages its members to share their “energy mix” and power consumption data for “research and educational purposes.” For now, Saylor’s mining group is hoping that alone is enough to reshape the public’s perception of BTC’s environmental impact.

Or, perhaps at the very least, Elon Musk’s.

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All content in this article is for informational purposes only and in no way serves as investment advice. Investing in cryptocurrencies, commodities and stocks is very risky and can lead to capital losses.
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