Controversial Bitcoin firebrand Michael Saylor claims Bitcoin (BTC) is the “most efficient, cleanest industrial use of electricity.”
The MicroStrategy executive chairman says in a new blog that his firm’s metrics indicate about 59.5% of energy for Bitcoin mining comes from sustainable sources.
Saylor also notes that Bitcoin mining’s energy efficiency improved by 46% year-on-year.
“No other industry comes close (consider planes, trains, automobiles, healthcare, banking, construction, precious metals, etc.). The Bitcoin network keeps getting more energy efficient because of the relentless improvement in the semiconductors (SHA-256 ASICs) that power the bitcoin mining centers, combined with the halving of Bitcoin mining rewards every four years that is built into the protocol. This results in a consistent 18-36% improvement year after year in energy efficiency.”
Saylor says $4-5 billion in electricity powers a Bitcoin network worth $420 billion.
“The value of the output is 100x the cost of the energy input. This makes Bitcoin far less energy intensive than Google, Netflix, or Facebook, and 1-2 orders of magnitude less energy intensive than traditional 20th-century industries like airlines, logistics, retail, hospitality, & agriculture.”
The MicroStrategy executive also takes aim at proof-of-stake networks.
“Regulators & legal experts have noted on many occasions that proof of stake (PoS) networks are likely securities, not commodities, and we can expect them to be treated as such over time. PoS Crypto Securities may be appropriate for certain applications, but they are not suitable to serve as global, open, fair money or a global open settlement network. Therefore, it makes no sense to compare proof of stake networks to Bitcoin.”
Last month, Saylor stepped down as MicroStrategy’s CEO, a move the executive says had nothing to do with the software company posting nearly $1 billion in BTC losses during the second quarter of the year.
In late August, Washington DC Attorney General Karl A. Racine announced that he’s suing the Bitcoin maximalist because he’s lived in Washington, D.C. for over 10 years but has never paid any taxes.
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