‘Skull of Satoshi’ proves that the Bitcoin mining discourse is not dead

Last week, Benjamin Von Wong unveiled an art installation he was commissioned to create by Greenpeace USA for the “Change the Code, Not the Climate” campaign. Funded by Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, the $5 million campaign aims to change Bitcoin’s proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm through a “code change” to save the environment.

The idea is that PoW uses energy and other consensus algorithms do not.

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Von Wong’s artwork was revealed on Thursday, March 23 in a blog post and video. He calls it the “Skull of Satoshi”—an apt name for an 11-foot-tall skull made of wood, recycled Styrofoam, and 300+ pieces of electronic waste. The skull also features red laser eyes, a nod to the Bitcoin Twitter community who use laser eyes in their profile pictures.

Instead of razzing the Bitcoin community, as Greenpeace’s campaign usually does, Skull was almost immediately universally embraced because it was very cool.

I mean, just look at how metal, how punk rock the whole art installation is. It’s literally an 11-foot skull with glowing red laser eyes and stacks of smoke growing out of the top. What’s not to love?

Without going into too much detail, the talk of moving Bitcoin from proof-of-work to something else, like proof-of-stake (PoS), which doesn’t use a lot of energy, is generally a non-starter. Bitcoin will almost certainly never move away from proof-of-work. It’s not obvious from the outside, so that’s exactly where Von Wong began his journey to understand bitcoin mining.

In a reflective tweet thread, Von Wong said he believed Bitcoin’s environmental issue was “black and white.” After the “phenomenal accident” of the Skull of Satoshi, Von Wong spent time in conversation with environmentalists such as bitcoiners, including Level 39, Troy Cross and Daniel Batten. He now recognizes that Bitcoin can be a powerful force for improving the environment.

This creates a slightly interesting parallel. Greenpeace will probably still use the Skull of Satoshi to promote their “change the code” campaign, but it will work everywhere except on the internet where the skull has become somewhat of a mascot for Bitcoin’s environmental potential even without moving the consensus mechanism from proof-of-work .

The story here is that Von Wong went from “there’s only one way to fix Bitcoin’s environmental problem” to “actually there are many ways to fix Bitcoin’s environmental problem” in a matter of days. It’s not a story because Von Wong is someone big, important or special. It is a story because as more and more people become interested in Bitcoin, the environmental issue will surely come up again and again. And bitcoiners will, and must, be ready to engage constructively.

For someone who has been around Bitcoin for a while, I viewed Von Wong’s learning process around the nuances of bitcoin mining as frankly unsurprising. The fact that it was done in what seemed like a relatively non-abrasive way bodes well for the onboarding of future eco-friendly bitcoiners.

If Bitcoin is to succeed, we need more bitcoiners. And because Bitcoin and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive, there are ways PoW blockchains can be a positive force.

Bitcoin is for everyone, including environmentalists.