BBC Says Tesla’s BTC Purchase Undermines Its Green Credentials

BBC Says Tesla’s latest bitcoin purchase will undermine the green credentials of the company as the car manufacturer announced it purchased $1.5 billion worth of BTC that boosted the entire sector, as we reported in our previous Bitcoin news.

Today, BBC says that it will criticize Tesla because its decision will undermine its environmental credentials:

 “Critics say electric-car firm Tesla’s decision to invest heavily in Bitcoin undermines its environmental image.”

The BBC article pulls data from the research by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance and their report shows that BTC mining consumes more electricity than the entire country of Argentina:

 “Cambridge researchers say it consumes around 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year – and is unlikely to fall unless the value of the currency slumps.”

As often is the case with mainstream media and their reports on crypto, there are some misconceptions about the article which distract the main message of the piece. One example relates to the block writing process which the author then linked to a lottery in which miners receive smaller amounts of the coin but a more fitting description would be that BTC is a race in which the winner receives 6.25 BTC:

 “As a reward, miners occasionally receive small amounts of Bitcoin in what is often likened to a lottery.”

What’s even more, the article quoted David Gerard, the popular author who makes a few points about the benchmark cryptocurrency like its wastefulness who also criticized Musk by saying that he used $1.5 billion of the taxpayers’ money to buy BTC:

 “Elon Musk has thrown away a lot of Tesla’s good work promoting energy transition. This is very bad… I don’t know how he can walk this back effectively.

Tesla got $1.5bn in environmental subsidies in 2020, funded by the taxpayer. It turned around and spent $1.5bn on Bitcoin, which is mostly mined with electricity from coal. Their subsidy needs to be examined.”

The research showed that since 2007, Tesla received $2.4 billion in subsidies and federal grants but no more since 2015. The Bitcoin energy consumption index took a different approach to BTC’s energy profile and claimed that 70% of BTC miners are located in china. As Dan Held commented:

 “Bitcoin is a super commodity, minted from energy, the fundamental commodity of the universe. PoW transmutes electricity into digital gold. The fact that PoW is “costly” is a feature, not a bug.“