The negative environmental effects of Bitcoin mining have been in the spotlight during the last week.
With Elon Musk announcing that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin as payment for its vehicles, and China putting a ban on Bitcoin mining throughout the entire country, the cryptocurrency struggled the past few days, the price going as low as $31k.
However, the price has picked up in the last 12 hours. This came after Musk tweeted that he’s talking to Bitcoin minors about future plans of using renewable energy for Bitcoin mining, saying it’s “potentially promising”.
Bitcoin price is now at a near key resistance level of $40,000 during U.S. trading as of Monday.
According to a follow-up tweet from Musk’s article, Michael Saylor, the founder and CEO of MicroStrategy, seemed to have attended the meeting with Musk along with other bitcoin miners from North America.
“The miners have agreed to form the Bitcoin Mining Council to promote energy usage transparency & accelerate sustainability initiatives worldwide,” Saylor wrote.
Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary has also spoken up about ‘green mining’. During CoinDesk’s Consensus 2021 conference on Monday, the entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary said that leading companies are hesitant to add crypto to their balance sheets due to environmental, socioeconomic, and corporate governance (ESG) concerns.
He pointed out that only about 1% of global institutions hold crypto as an asset class, and for that to change, miners must demonstrate that their coins are made in a sustainable manner, according to O’Leary.
O’Leary is interested in “tagging,” or wrapping bitcoin that has been mined sustainably, and has encouraged miners to challenge financial institutions with a strategy.
Although the concept seems to be a win-win, miners and influential members of the industry have expressed reservations about the use of mining pools and the necessary fungibility of BTC. So-called “clean bitcoin,” according to Nic Carter, is a chimera – something more abstract than actual.
Still, O’Leary, a serial entrepreneur, and venture capitalist is looking for ways to fund companies that can have renewable mining services and frameworks. Greener practices, he claims, would help push up asset values by stoking demand.
