Following the merger of Ethereum and Bitcoin, Greenpeace intensifies its anti-Bitcoin campaign.
Aside from a $1 million advertising budget, climate groups hope to persuade institutions like Fidelity and BlackRock to push Bitcoin to switch from PoW to PoS.
Aside from a $1 million advertising budget, climate groups hope to persuade institutions like Fidelity and BlackRock to push Bitcoin to switch from PoW to PoS.
โข Following Ethereum’s conversion to PoS, Greenpeace and the Environmental Working Group have launched a $1 million smear campaign against Bitcoin.
โข The campaign has a petition urging Fidelity, BlackRock, and others to abandon PoW for Bitcoin.
โข Bitcoin detractors must understand how the currency works.
According to a press release, Greenpeace and the Environmental Working Group have increased their attack on Bitcoin’s proof-of-work (PoW) system with a $1 million ad campaign.
Climate activists want institutions like Fidelity, BlackRock, Block, and PayPal to influence the Bitcoin protocol. The group wants these institutions to help move the consensus mechanism away from proof-of-work (PoW) and toward proof-of-stake (PoS).
The intensification of an attack that began in March with the launch of the “Change The Code, Not The Climate” campaign comes as the Merge, an event that changed Ethereum’s consensus mechanism from PoW to PoS, is completed today.
“Ethereum has shown that switching to a protocol that uses less energy can make a big difference in reducing climate, air, and water pollution,” said Michael Brune, who runs the Change the Code, Not the Climate campaign.
However, one could argue that these environmental organisations are overlooking something crucial about Bitcoin. Not only is PoW the true innovation and foundation of Bitcoin’s success, but this would not be the first instance of institutional and corporate pressure to change the Bitcoin protocol.
As a result of the Block Size Wars, many institutions argued for larger block sizes on the blockchain, which would have resulted in the centralization of nodes on the network, reducing the distributed network that exists today. Ultimately, attempts to centralise the network failed because the decentralised network stayed strong, and an upgrade called SegWit made it possible to change the block size without having to centralise Bitcoin’s infrastructure.
Furthermore, climate-based criticism of Bitcoin is becoming increasingly debunked. In fact, the executive chairman of the pro-Bitcoin software analytics company Micro Strategy published a paper yesterday that answered many common accusations.