We note that the topic of the possible impact of Etherium’s move to PoS on Bitcoin has not come up for the first time. Eth’s blockchain has thus become much more environmentally friendly – and this is a reason to pay attention to the remaining PoW coins with serious consumption. Chief among them is Bitcoin, which now has a network hash rate of 233 EH/s.

Bitcoin’s network hash rate graph for the last month

As Dan Held of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken noted earlier, this could be a reason to criticise Bitcoin. You can read more about the expert’s position here.

Major myths about Bitcoin

One of Seylor’s key arguments is to debunk the widespread belief that Bitcoin is supposedly not an energy-efficient system. Here’s his rejoinder to that.

Bitcoin mining is the most efficient and cleanest industrial use of electricity, and its energy efficiency is improving at the fastest rate of any major industry. Our metrics show that approximately 59.5 percent of the electricity for BTC mining comes from renewable sources, and energy efficiency has improved by 46 percent compared to last year.

It should be noted that Michael Saylor cannot be completely trusted in such matters, as he is a stakeholder. After all, his company MicroStrategy is the largest holder of BTC among public companies. Therefore, it is quite obvious that Michael will promote Bitcoin and ignore the weaknesses of the coin. On top of that, Sailor has previously raved about possible problems for popular cryptocurrencies due to possible SEC actions, and that's definitely not in line with the ideals of decentralization.

Share of BTC mining in total global energy consumption

According to Cointelegraph sources, Saylor claims that the constant improvement of the cryptocurrency network and “improved semiconductor technology” makes mining much more energy efficient than even the big tech companies. Here’s his quote.

Approximately $4-5 billion worth of electricity is used to power and protect the network, which is currently worth $420 billion. This makes Bitcoin far less energy efficient than Google, Netflix or Facebook.

Comparing the energy consumption of BTC mining to other industries

Saylor is also convinced that 99.92 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions are due to the industrial electricity use of every industry in the world except Bitcoin mining. Therefore, the former MicroStrategy executive does not consider the arguments of environmentalists condemning Proof-of-Work mining to be fair.

For clarity, here is a comparison table of the consumption of various human activity industries from the developers of Etherium. Bitcoin mining can be compared to a gold mining niche or a YouTube platform operation.

The level of electricity consumption by different human activity niches

Rather, in his view, it’s an attempt to “draw negative attention to mining in general” and distract the public from the “inconvenient truth” that Proof-of-Stake-based crypto-assets are typically unregistered securities traded on unregulated exchanges.

In fairness, though, it’s worth noting that the US Securities and Exchange Commission has never been able to prove for several years that Ripple’s XRP is a security after filing suit. So there’s not much point in counting on the regulator’s activity for Michael.

Comparing BTC mining power consumption to countries

As we have already noted, Michael Sailor’s opinion cannot be considered completely unbiased. MicroStrategy is the largest institutional holder of BTC among publicly traded companies, with Seylor’s policy of continually hoarding bitcoins on the firm’s balance sheet resulting in a huge unrealised loss. He benefits from promoting Bitcoin specifically, while also actively criticising other cryptocurrencies. Although by doing so he also buries his reputation among lovers of other coins and decentralisation in general.

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By the way, the move of Ether to PoS mentioned at the very beginning, which was partly the reason for Seylor’s article, did not lead to a noticeable increase in both ETH and BTC. In the last 24 hours, the value of the former has fallen by almost 10 percent.

Major cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation

Meanwhile, Bitcoin has once again collapsed below the psychologically important $20,000 level.

Bitcoin’s daily rate chart

During the merger, the market saw increased volatility, which was caused by large inflows of BTC to exchanges from miners.

BTC inflows to exchanges before the merger

Experts at analytics platform CryptoQuant commented on the incident.

Current Bitcoin inflows to exchanges from miners on an hourly basis is 10.4537 BTC, which is above recent peaks in miner transfer activity. Stable values above 10 BTC were last recorded in July and August before the cryptocurrency’s local decline. Typically, mass transfers of miners to exchanges are usually associated with subsequent pressure on the market, meaning miners sell out and the BTC price falls.

ASIC miner for Bitcoin mining


We don't think Bitcoin will move to PoS even with plenty of criticism of the cryptocurrency network. Still, it requires years of testing and industry willingness, which may not be there. Some BTC enthusiasts will probably interpret the prospect of a blockchain upgrade as a rejection of Satoshi Nakamoto's covenants and a betrayal of his ideals, respectively. So it's hardly worth waiting for something like that.


What do you think about it? Share your opinion in our Millionaire Crypto Chat. We talk about other important topics there as well.