Greenpeace's Anti-Bitcoin "Mining for Power" Report Receives Fierce Backlash on X
“Mining for Power,” an anti-Bitcoin report by Greenpeace USA that explains the links between the bitcoin mining industry and fossil fuel companies, has faced a backlash in social media due to its inaccurate portraits of the mining activity. Using community notes, social network users detailed the report contained “many factual errors,” including outdated information.
Greenpeace Bitcoin “Mining for Power” Report Gets Debunked on X
“Mining for Power,” a report by Greenpeace USA that allegedly reveals the links that bitcoin mining has with fossil fuel companies and conservative lobbies, has faced a strong backlash in social networks given its inaccuracies on current industry data.
The 36-page report states that most of the power used for bitcoin mining comes from fossil fuels and that the carbon footprint of the bitcoin network has only grown over time. Also, it stated that Bitcoin’s power demand is “straining electrical grids and increasing costs for ratepayers.”
Greenpeace’s report identified a “revolving door” between bitcoin mining companies and organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and others funded by the Koch brothers, alongside officers from the Trump Administration.
Daniel Batten, managing partner at CH4 Capital and a researcher on the bitcoin power issue, lambasted this report, stating that people “rarely make it past the first paragraph without reading a large swathe of misinformation.” He called out the organization for spreading misinformation, saying that this kind of behavior only weakened its voice and ability to become a “positive voice for change.”
Nonetheless, not only Batten criticized the conclusions and asseverations disseminated by Greenpeace’s report. X user “Explorative Trail Mallard” issued a community note opposing the report’s contents and pointing out the differences with updated industry data.
The note stressed:
The article contains many factual errors, like the flawed per transaction accounting of energy, and outdated and inaccurate information, such as the proportion of fossil fuels used as energy source. Nowadays the majority of the energy used by Bitcoin mining is renewable.
In January, Greenpeace criticized the approval of a slew of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF). Rolf Skar, National Campaigns Director at Greenpeace USA, declared that this move constituted a “win for executives at big Wall Street companies but a loss for the climate and society.”
What do you think about Greenpeace’s USA “Mining for Power” Report? Tell us in the comments section below.
