- Ripple Co-Founder in partnership with environmental groups launched a campaign aimed at changing the bitcoin code to reduce energy consumption.
- Chris Larsen gave $5 million to fund the effort after expressing concerns about energy consumption in the past.
Bitcoin, according to many investors is a digital gold, but its energy consumption is too high, and angers environmental groups, lawmakers, and put the cryptocurrency at odds with the green movement.
Greenpeace, along with other climate groups and Ripple co-founder and executive chairman Chris Larsen, have launched a new campaign aimed at changing Bitcoin (BTC) to a greener consensus model.The “Change the Code, Not the Climate” campaign aims to get key industry leaders, Bitcoin miners and influencers such as Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey to move to a new consensus model.
Greenpeace, the Environmental Working Group, and other organizations will advertise in media outlets such as the New York Times.
Politico and The Wall Street Journal highlight Bitcoin’s impact on the environment and advocate for change. The campaign is funded by Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen. Mr. Larsen said he gave $5 million to the campaign.
Related: Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen: Bitcoin should switch to Proof-of-Stake, PoW is outdated
Bitcoin to move from PoW to PoS
The goal is to convince BTC investors and supporters to change the network’s code and remove the “Proof of Work” mechanism, which requires Bitcoin miners to expend a certain amount of energy when processing transactions to earn rewards in newly created Bitcoin.
Its energy consumption is a defense mechanism to protect the network. Because it is an open-source project, anyone can run Bitcoin software. But the network requires miners to expend huge amounts of processing power to make it expensive for someone to take over the network. As such, it is extremely difficult to create fake coins or manipulate transactions.
The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance estimates that the Bitcoin network consumes slightly more energy (134.9 terawatt hours per year) than Norway (124.3 terawatt hours).
The Ethereum network also uses Proof of Work but is switching to the Proof of Stake model. The implementation which has been delayed several times for technical reasons is intended to reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption by 99 percent.
The new campaign hopes to bring a similar shift for the lead cryptocurrency. Larsen told Bloomberg:
Now with Ethereum changing, Bitcoin really is the outlier. Some of the newer protocols — Solana, Cardano — are built on low energy.
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