The MicroStrategy CEO suggested the group was aimed more at defending Bitcoin’s image than promoting environmentally friendly mining.
A day after announcing the creation of a Bitcoin Mining Council to add transparency and promote renewable energy usage in the Bitcoin industry, one of the cryptocurrency’s highest-profile backers redefined the narrative on Tuesday.
Speaking at the Consensus by CoinDesk conference, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor explained that the organization’s main goal is “managing concerns, especially from uninformed parties.”
The chorus of critics arguing that the pollution attributed to Bitcoin mining has gotten louder and louder recently, most notably after Tesla CEO Elon Musk abruptly reversed course and announced his electric car company would no longer accept Bitcoin in payment. Musk’s comments, three months after his company bought $1.5 billion in BTC for its treasury, were widely blamed for causing —at least as the straw that broke the camel’s back — the recent Bitcoin price collapse.
On May 24, Musk tweeted support for the Bitcoin Mining Council, saying he had participated in its formation and called its commitment to publish renewable energy usage numbers was “potentially promising.”
Improving the Record or the Reputation?
Speaking at Consensus on May 25, Saylor said, “We need to make sure that people that are hostile to bitcoin and hostile to the crypto industry aren’t defining these narratives and defining those models and defining those metrics,” according to CoinDesk. “In the absence of any good information or any response on our part, they will define those models.”
Which is somewhat different in tone — although not really in substance — than his comments in the May 24 tweet: “The miners have agreed to form the Bitcoin Mining Council to promote energy usage transparency & accelerate sustainability initiatives worldwide.”
Saylor’s huge Bitcoin buys on behalf of MicroStrategy last year — the company has 92,000, currently worth $3.5 billion — kicked off a growing interest in investing nine- and 10-figure sums for corporate treasuries that has taken in companies ranging from Jack Dorsey’s payments firm Square to old-line insurance firm Mass Mutual.
