Norway’s Environment Minister Reveals He Is Holding BTC

Norway’s Environment Minister Sveinung Rotevatn revealed he is holding Bitcoin in an interview this week that we read more about in our latest bitcoin news today.

The country isn’t really a crypto-friendly country but the high-ranking officials, well at least some of them, own some form of crypto. Norway’s Environment minister revealed his among them. He said that BTC is a well-suited store of value and added that mining using powerful computing equipment to validate the transactions and to maintain the network poses a huge environmental challenge.

Norway's 🇳🇴 Minister of Climate and the Environment, @Rotevatn, says he hodls #bitcoin

The minister carrying out the environmental policies of one of the most renewable energy-focused governments in the world, sees #bitcoin as "well-suited for a store of value"

— Documenting Bitcoin 🟩 (@DocumentingBTC) May 6, 2021

Norway is known for its high-tech finance industry and it is one of the few cashless countries on the planet with 4% of the payments conducted with banknotes and coins. The adoption of digital payments hasn’t spilled over to the crypto space and the central bank of the country stated in the past that BTC doesn’t preserve stability and it is too expensive. The governor of Norges Bank Oystein Olsen noted:

“The basic property and task for a central bank and central-bank currency is to provide stability in the value of money and in the system, and that is not done by Bitcoin.”

Rotevatn however has a different way of seeing it. He noted:

“What might make Bitcoin so exciting is that it has some of the same properties. You can’t suddenly discover a ton of Bitcoin somewhere, giving one country huge reserves. It’s spread evenly, it grows slowly, but steadily, and has a finite supply. Therefore, it’s theoretically well-suited as a store of value.”

The use of BTC as a store of value aside, Rotevatn pointed out that the climate challenges are still a major concern. The minister said that the majority of the energy sources used by the mining facilities were renewable in nature while claiming the asset is using plenty of energy, as a matter of fact, energy as the state of Texas. He noted that the banking and gold industries consumed more energy in the past than BTC did but not everyone agrees.

As reported, According to Norges Bank reports, 4% of Norway uses cash as its usage declined since the COVID-19 pandemic hit. However, physical currency also carries strengths that CBDCs could lack.