Malice Or Ignorance? The New York Times Keeps Printing Lies About Bitcoin Mining

The New York Times’ campaign against bitcoin rages on. Even though this time they had the perfect opportunity to write a balanced article, they didn’t. The author reports one positive bitcoin mining story after another, while keeping a snooty attitude and suggesting it’s all a PR move. The title summarizes the New York Times’ stance, “Bitcoin Miners Want to Recast Themselves as Eco-Friendly.” Related Reading | Valkyrie Bitcoin Mining ETF “WGMI” Approved For Nasdaq Listing Before we get into it, a quick story. The foremost expert in bitcoin’s energy consumption, Nic Carter, published an exhaustive report on mining. Among other things, it contained hard data that showed to what extent China was mining using hydropower energy. Mainstream media largely ignored it. The party line was that we couldn’t trust China’s statistics. And, that China was probably burning cole.  Fast forward to last month. China banned bitcoin mining a while ago and bitcoin’s hashrate relocated, recovered, while the network functioned perfectly throughout. Most of China’s mining industry relocated to green energy-abundant countries. What did the New York Times post? An article called “China Banished Cryptocurrencies. Now, ‘Mining’ Is Even Dirtier,” that claims that Chinese miners were using hydropower energy and thus used cleaner energy. That’s the level of propaganda we’re dealing with. What Did The New York Times Say About Bitcoin Mining This Time? The article starts by featuring Argo Blockchain, the company is building a new facility that “would be fueled mostly by wind and solar energy.” They even quote Peter Wall, Argo CEO, saying. “This is Bitcoin mining nirvana. You look off into the distance and you’ve got your renewable power.” What could be wrong with that? Two paragraphs later, the New York Times starts pushing lies and embarrassing numbers:  “A single Bitcoin transaction now requires more than 2,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, or enough energy to power the average American household for 73 days, researchers estimate.” Of course, those ridiculous claims come from Digiconomist, a widely debunked researcher who happens to be an employee of the Dutch Central Bank. And then, they blatantly quote the malicious study mentioned in the intro.  “The Bitcoin network’s use of green energy sources also dropped to an average of 25 percent in August 2021 from 42 percent in 2020. (The industry has argued that its average renewable use is closer to 60 percent.) That’s partly a result of China’s crackdown, which cut off a source of cheap hydropower.” And quote Alex de Vries, one of the study’s authors, being completely off the mark. “What a miner is going to do if they want to maximize the profit is put their machine wherever it can run the entire day.” WHAT? To maximize profit, a miner is going to find the cheapest source of energy possible. Energy is their biggest cost. The cheapest source possible is energy that’s currently being wasted. That’s the situation. BTC price chart for 03/26/2022 on Forex.com | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com More Feel-Good Stories Framed As Bad News The New York Times even quotes Paul Prager, TeraWulf CEO, saying “Everyone I talk to now is talking about carbon neutrality. The language has absolutely changed.” And then, the newspaper spreads the good news. “TeraWulf, has pledged to run cryptocurrency mines using more than 90 percent zero-carbon energy. It has two projects in the works — a retired coal plant in upstate New York fueled by hydropower, and a nuclear-powered facility in Pennsylvania.” None of these stories are celebrated. Remember the article’s title, they are cynically presented as PR stunts. Then, it´s time for Sangha Systems, who “repurposed an old steel mill in the town of Hennepin. Sangha is run by a former lawyer, Spencer Marr, who says he founded the company to promote clean energy. But about half the Hennepin operation’s power comes from fossil fuels.” The New York Times Closes The Loop That’s the worst example that the New York Times could find. A person who “founded the company to promote clean energy” but had to make a compromise to start his business. To close the article, the author brings us back to Argo Blockchain and tries to pull something similar. Apparently, the CEO “can’t guarantee that Argo’s new center will have no carbon footprint. That would require bypassing the grid and buying energy directly from a renewable power company.” Related Reading | Biden Loves Intel’s Plan To Produce Semiconductors. What About Bitcoin Mining? And then, they quote him again. “A lot of those renewable energy producers are still a little bit skeptical of cryptocurrency. The crypto miners don’t have the credit profiles to sign 10- or 15-year deals.” So, Argo is really trying but it’s not possible at the moment for understandable reasons. And the whole industry is moving to a greener path because the incentives are aligned that way. Got it, New York Times. Got it. Featured Image by tacskooo on Pixabay | Charts by TradingView

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Bitcoin Mining More Damaging To The Environment After China Ban, Study Says

The China bitcoin mining ban that took place mid-last year was no doubt a heavy blow to the space. It saw the hash rate from the region which was once termed the mining capital of the world crumble to almost zero as miners had to shut down their operations. The reason for this from the Chinese government boiled down to concerns about electricity consumption and environmental impact. As the miners exited China, they had to set up business elsewhere and procure electricity for their mining farms, which can be quite energy-intensive. According to a new report, these new energy sources have been mainly from non-renewable sources compared to what the miners used in China. This means that the energy impact of bitcoin mining has gone up in recent months. Bitcoin Mining Carbon Footprint Now Worse It has been less than a year since China placed a ban on bitcoin mining and the effects are already being felt energy-wise. The general school of thought following the ban had been that miners would focus on more renewable energy sources so as to avoid a repeat of the issues in the region. However, a new study has shown that this is not so. Rather, the environmental impact of bitcoin mining has only gotten worse. Related Reading | TA: Why Bitcoin Must Close Above $40K For Trend Reversal China is a country known for its wide use of hydropower, a renewable energy source, and the miners in the country had used a significant amount of renewable energy for their operations. Even then, the carbon footprint of mining activities was still enough to cause a stink. The Joule journal has revealed that miners have not necessarily increased their renewable energy consumption. BTC trading above $38,000 | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com The study shows that the amount of renewable energy used by bitcoin miners has fallen since the ban. At its peak, this number had reached as high as 42% in August. But since then, barely seven months after, renewable energy use in mining has fallen to as low as 25%. Related Reading | Bitcoin Staggers After Putin’s Nuclear Deterrence Alert Warning Bitcoin mining continues to produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide yearly. With over 65 megatons of carbon dioxide produced annually, bitcoin mining is less green than ever. For comparison, the entire country of Greece reportedly produced less than 57 megatons of carbon dioxide in 2019. This means that miners are producing more CO2 than entire countries. A lot of the miners that left China have now moved to countries where energy sources are largely produced by burins “hard coal” which produces more pollution. This new study shows that mining is less favorable to the environment now. Its carbon intensity has already grown by 17%. Featured image from Bloomberg, chart from TradingView.com

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China’s Crypto & Bitcoin (BTC) Mining Ban Makes U.S the Top Miner

China’s crypto mining drops to zero with nothing. The U.S is now the top crypto miner in the world. China

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Since China’s Mining Ban, Bitcoin Hashrate Has Recovered by 68% And Counting

Bitcoin is a perpetual motion machine. The Bitcoin hashrate is slowly climbing to pre-China-ban levels, and the service continued uninterrupted without a hiccup. Such is the power of well-placed incentives. Pantera Capital’s CEO Dan Morehead adds one more factor to the equation. “The bitcoin network has recovered 68% of the drop in hashrate that our difficulty model attributed to China’s ban—likely in places with cleaner energy.” The recovery is happening exactly as forecast. The #bitcoin network has recovered 68% of the drop in hashrate that our difficulty model attributed to China's ban—likely in places with cleaner energy. The transition to renewables is underway. Sep Letter: https://t.co/xLyaLpPQQN pic.twitter.com/UsK9ML3BU8 — Dan Morehead (@dan_pantera) September 9, 2021 In the company’s newsletter, Pantera fleshes out the argument: “Although difficult to know with certainty, it seems very likely that much of the reboot in mining power is occurring in places with cleaner energy than those utilized by Chinese miners.  The transition to renewables is well underway.” Regarding The Bitcoin Hashrate, Are ESG Concerns Even Important? Here at NewsBTC we’ve determined that China’s Bitcoin mining tended to go to provinces with abundant green energy. Bitcoin incentivizes that. The Bitcoin hashrate tends to go where the energy is cheap. We’ve also determined that the environment doesn’t seem to be the reason for China’s Bitcoin mining ban. “The fact that the electricity for crypto mining in Sichuan came from clean hydropower meant that many thought the province would be a safe haven for Bitcoin miners. As pressure on local governments to cut carbon emissions mounts, projects were successfully shuttered in some other provincial-level regions — such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia — where the mining was chiefly fueled by coal.”  The only thing we can know for sure about the Chinese government’s plan is this: the environment is not on their radar. They’re closing these mining operations for other reasons altogether.  It’s also important to remember that China’s Bitcoin hashrate dominance was already on decline before the mining ban.  “According to Arcane Research, CBECI numbers say that: China’s share of total Bitcoin mining power has declined from 75.5% in September 2019 to 46% in April 2021?—?before the restrictions on Chinese miners were even imposed. That figure is much lower than the older estimate of 65%. That’s a sharp decline. Why did China’s miners lose so much ground before the ban?” None of this invalidates Pantera Capital’s original thesis, though. “The transition to renewables is well underway,” that certainly seems to be the case. And the Bitcoin hashrate keeps climbing.  BTC price chart for 09/09/2021 on Timex | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com Do Bitcoin Halvins Imply Cuts In Energy Consumption? Another interesting idea present in the mentioned newsletter is this one: “Bitcoin has a built-in mechanism to reduce energy consumption over time.  The number of bitcoin issued in the every-ten-minutes block reward is cut in half every four years.  Ceteris paribus, the amount of electricity Bitcoin consumes will be cut by 50% every four years.  For comparison, the Paris Accord only requires 7% cuts every four years.” Of course, when related to fiat currencies, Bitcoin’s price fluctuates. So, the value of every Bitcoin stays the same, but the price might – and usually does – increase more than twofold. Even though the miner’s rewards are cut in half, their earnings might increase. That extra money could bring even more competition and a Bitcoin hashrate increase with it.  Taking that into account, Pantera poses: “Perhaps a more realistic scenario is if the price of bitcoin were to double every four years in parallel with the halvings – putting bitcoin at $320,000 /BTC in 2032 – electricity consumption would be no greater than it is today.” Enough About The Bitcoin Hashrate, What About The Price? Another point that the newsletter makes is this one.“This is China’s third ban of Bitcoin.  The reverse hex is still working – the price is up 57%.” Related Reading | New To Bitcoin? Learn To Trade Crypto With The NewsBTC Trading Course Is this a bullish signal? Bitcoin’s price has “only” increased by 57% since the Chinese mining ban sent the Bitcoin hashrate in death spiral for a few seconds. Bitcoin paid the price and resisted sabotage like a hero. We’re not sure if a “reverse hex” could be considered reliable information, but… maybe this IS a bullish signal? Featured Image by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash - Charts by TradingView and Pantera Capital

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