Michael Saylor Defends Elon Musk, BTC Mining Council Against Centralization Criticisms
2 min read
At CoinDesk‘s Consensus conference earlier today, BTC evangelist Michael Saylor defended the newly formed BTC Mining Council against criticisms that it runs counter to the “decentralized” spirit of BTC.
Saylor announced the council yesterday afternoon, after Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted about having met with “North American BTC miners” about sustainability; Saylor described it as an “organization to standardize energy reporting, pursue industry ESG goals, & educate+grow the marketplace.”
“ESG” is an investing strategy centered around “environmental, social, and governance” concerns—it’s a shorthand for sustainability in the corporate sphere.
Crypto critics were quick to cry hypocrisy: Saylor and his acolytes like to say that BTC is all about “decentralization”—that is, no central governing body, no oligarchic control over the system. How would consolidating power over the future of the BTC ecosystem square with that mission?
And forming a cartel of US-based miners that does the bidding of @elonmusk and Michael Saylor is the next stage of decentralization? https://t.co/tNA5LHjxeN
— (((Frances 'Cassandra' Coppola)))
(@Frances_Coppola) May 25, 2021
Musk himself has criticized BTC for being too centralized, citing an incident where a single accident in a Chinese coal mine temporarily took out around 30% of the total computing power behind the global BTC network.
BTC is actually highly centralized, with supermajority controlled by handful of big mining (aka hashing) companies.
A single coal mine in Xinjiang flooded, almost killing miners, and BTC hash rate dropped 35%. Sound “decentralized” to you?https://t.co/Oom8yzGRNQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2021
Saylor, who has personally invested hundreds millions of dollars in BTC, didn’t really address those concerns beyond saying that “everybody in that meeting, including Elon, are passionate believers in decentralization.”
He added that he hopes to wrest control of the BTC narrative from “uninformed parties” who don’t necessarily agree with his opinion on BTC and the environment.
