• Saylor announced that he, Musk, and other major US Bitcoin miners will create the Bitcoin Mining Council.
• The consortium will focus on crypto-mining sustainability and transparency.
• The timing of this eco-centric crypto-mining consortium could be beneficial to US-based outfits.
• It’s too early to tell if this Saylor-Musk-green-crypto-mining initiative is truly intended to benefit the environment.

In a message to Twitter followers on Monday, the founder and CEO of MicroStrategy – Michael Saylor – announced that he facilitated a meeting with major US Bitcoin miners AND Tesla CEO, Elon Musk. The attendees agreed to create an eco-friendly consortium called the Bitcoin Mining Council to advance environmental sustainability and transparency within the crypto-mining space.

Both CEOs made big news within the crypto-sphere earlier this year when their respective organizations added billions worth of Bitcoin to their separate corporate balance sheets. Musk upped the ante when he stated that Tesla would also start accepting Bitcoin as payment for his company’s electric vehicles to consumers.

Since then, both companies have lost hundreds of millions in US dollars, beginning on May 12th, when Musk slammed that digital BTC payment deal for his Tesla e-automobiles in reverse after less than a month—crashing the junked idea into the cryptocurrency market, causing massive wreckage to investors’ portfolios and coin valuations alike.

Musk’s reasoning for the Bitcoin-car-buying ban was his concerns about the alleged “increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining.” Bitcoin produces new coins using an energy-intensive process called “Proof of Work,” which requires a lot of electricity to run massive computer server farms that solve complex encryption puzzles to score new Bitcoins.

In this tweet, Musk then raised concerns about such ecological arrangements, which was heard around the crypto world.

Musk’s surprising, and arguably incongruent, decision against Bitcoin was made despite Tesla’s serious environmental problems with its own projects including:

• Only 60% of Tesla’s Lithium-Ion batteries are recyclable, and the other 40% of composite materials land in landfills when they no longer hold a charge.
• Thousands of metric tons of soot, methane, and trace gases were pumped into the atmosphere from SpaceX’s kerosene-fueled rockets to launch 42,000 satellites for Musk’s Starlink project.

Regardless, that’s all polluted water under the bridge now that Saylor and Musk have launched a renewable BTC mining initiative in the US. Saylor tweeted a list of the largest Bitcoin mining operations invited to that inaugural meeting.

Saylor’s tweet referenced the intent to “…pursue industry ESG goals…”, which are environmental, social, and governance (ESG) guidelines established under the U.N. Principles for Responsible Investment, suggesting an effort to preemptively work within established global environmental parameters. It’s a smart, proactive move since new industries that effectively self-regulate tend to forestall more restrictive government rules and oversight in the long run.

Additionally, the timing of this eco-centric crypto-mining consortium could be extremely beneficial to US-based outfits. Late last week, the Chinese State Council announced that it has stepped up its crackdown on cryptocurrencies, forcing several massive Bitcoin mining operations to shut down activities in China and quickly relocate.

It’s worth noting that the action of the Chinese government seems to have nothing to do with the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining and everything to do with cryptocurrency control. The steps taken by China are a blatant attempt by the leaders of that command economy to eliminate decentralized cryptocurrency – a direct threat and competitor to the state’s newly launched and wholly owned central bank digital currency, the digital yuan.

On the Flipside

• While this Bitcoin Mining Council is good in theory, it’s unclear whether it will be good in practice since as much as 70% of the world’s Bitcoin is currently mined in China.
• The temporary disruption of Bitcoin mining in China could lower hash rates in the short term, resulting in drops in Bitcoin supply and network security as dislocated miners try to relaunch ops in crypto-conducive countries quickly.
• It’s too early to tell if this Saylor-Musk-green-crypto-mining initiative truly benefits the environment or is simply a scheme to protect their respective billions invested in Bitcoin from eco-focused government sanctions down the road.

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The opinions expressed within the article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of DailyCoin or its affiliates.