Bitcoin (BTC) must achieve Ethereum (ETH) standards or will be lost

• Greenpeace criticizes Bitcoin for its high energy consumption.
• Bitcoin lawyer, Michael Saylor, defends Bitcoin’s energy use.

After the success of the Ethereum Merge, the non-profit environmental protection company Greenpeace has criticized Bitcoin due to its high consumption. One of the reasons for the Ethereum merger is to achieve a significant reduction in carbon emissions. According to Greenpeace, it has an advertising budget of $1 million, which is aimed at the “change the code, not the climate” campaign.

The campaign will be seen with new online ads that seek to change Bitcoin’s code and reduce its high energy consumption. Analysts have often reiterated that Bitcoin’s proof-of-work model is an intense, high-energy model. The director of the ad campaign, Michael Brune, said business leaders and state and federal governments are aiming to decarbonize as quickly as possible to stop the massive fires and historic floods affecting the world.

Brune further said that Ethereum has proven that it is possible to switch to an energy-efficient protocol. This means that water, air and climate are less polluted. Brune added that the time has come for Bitcoin to accept its climate responsibility by switching to an efficient consensus mechanism as other crypto protocols have been doing for years.

Greenpeace says the campaign also aims to attract the attention of well-known Bitcoin advocates such as Jack Dorsey’s Block, Paypal and Fidelity Investments. Thus, these Bitcoin advocates can make an effort to push for Bitcoin to become a more energy efficient protocol.

Rober Altenburg, senior director of Pennfuture (a nonprofit focused on clean energy economics and protection of Pennsylvania’s land, air and water), said the vulnerable communities near crypto miners’ operations are paying the actual costs. They suffer from the public health and environmental damage caused by the air pollution these miners create.

He went on to say that the worst case scenario is that Bitcoin miners use old, polluting coal plants for their operations since taxpayers’ money heavily subsidizes this energy source. The merger, which took place on September 15, saw Ethereum (the second largest crypto) switch to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus. A CCRI report accredited by blockchain software firm Consensys says that the transition to a PoS model will reduce Ethereum’s carbon emissions by approximately 99.99 percent.

Michael Saylor defends Bitcoin’s energy use

Meanwhile, vocal Bitcoin supporter Michael Saylor has argued that Bitcoin’s energy use is the cleanest and most efficient industrial use of electricity. Saylor wrote a detailed blog post to explain his reasons. The founder of business analytics company, Microstrategy, said his firm’s analysis revealed that 59.5 percent of the energy for Bitcoin mining comes from sustainable sources.

He added that there had been a 46 percent annual improvement in Bitcoin mining’s energy efficiency. Saylor also said that there is no basis for comparing Bitcoin and proof-of-stake networks. According to him, Bitcoin mining (proof-of-work), when distributed fairly fairly, is the only proven way to create a digital commodity.