Recently, Greenpeace has panned Bitcoin by creating artwork that portrays the environmental harm caused by cryptocurrency. However, the Bitcoin community has responded positively to the artwork.
Greenpeace is persisting in its efforts to modify the code of Bitcoin, but individuals who support Bitcoin are not giving their activism significant attention.
The recent publicity stunt by Greenpeace in their campaign against the BTC mining companies has had the opposite effect, as supporters of Bitcoin have embraced the artwork created by Greenpeace.
At the same time, Bitcoin supporters continue to criticize Greenpeace’s attempts to criticize the network for its negative impact on the environment and remain steadfast in supporting its Proof of work agreement device.
‘The Skull of Satoshi’ Artwork
Every action people perform on the internet requires energy, but Bitcoin mining and transactions require an unusually high amount of energy. Researchers from the University of New Mexico concluded that Bitcoin’s environmental impact is comparable to extracting and refining crude oil.
On Friday, Greenpeace reiterated their previous allegations through a tweet that Bitcoin is causing significant pollution in the real world due to the consumption of fossil fuels, which is encouraged by its obsolete code.
The activist organization used its original hashtag, “#Change_The_Code,” in the tweet – this is part of their initiative to encourage Bitcoin to switch its agreement mechanism from the initial Proof of Work to Proof of stake.
Bitcoin’s Proof of Work consensus mechanism involves users competing with computational power to solve the next block and receive rewards, which helps ensure the blockchain’s security.
In contrast, Proof of stake requires users to stake their cryptocurrency when verifying blocks, leading to significantly less energy consumption than Proof of work.
The tweet featured ‘The Skull of Satoshi’ by Benjamin Von Wong, intended to represent the damage caused by the consumption of fossil fuels and expose other BTC dangers. The eleven-foot-tall sculpture is constructed using computer motherboards. It features smokestacks and glowing red eyes frequently used in the Twitter profile pictures of Bitcoin enthusiasts.
Von Wong points out that a single Google search uses up to around one thousand and eight Joules of energy, whereas a single Bitcoin transaction requires an alarming seven billion Joules of energy.
This data shows that a Bitcoin transaction uses almost six and a half million times more energy than a Google search and nearly twenty-four thousand three hundred times more energy than streaming one hour of content on Netflix.
Bitcoin Supporters React
The bulls themselves, though, found the situation more entertaining and even admirable than they did offensive.
Nic Carter, co-founder of Castle Island Ventures and a well-known writer, tweeted that Greenpeace unintentionally created the most hardcore bitcoin artwork in their misguided campaign against Proof of Work. Previously, he had argued that Bitcoin’s mining sector was environmentally beneficial rather than harmful.
@notgrubles and others found some aspects of the artwork amusing, such as the fact that it did not include a single ASIC machine in its design and the use of nuclear-cooling towers, which release harmless water vapor.
Some people criticized Greenpeace for receiving five million dollars from Ripple executives to criticize Bitcoin mining in the first place.
In September, Michael Saylor, who is among the top holders of Bitcoin globally, dismissed concerns about the energy consumption of Bitcoin, stating that it was mainly propaganda spread by altcoin promoters. Nevertheless, he and the Bitcoin Mining Council regularly provide information about Bitcoin’s green energy usage, which is significantly higher than that of other sectors.