Last night, Musk and others held a Bitcoin confidence conference in the bear market

In the early morning of July 21st, Beijing time, The B Word conference was held as scheduled. This may be the most important event in the cryptocurrency industry in 2021 and it is highly anticipated. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and "female stock god" ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood and other Bitcoin heavyweight KOLs will gather here.

The timing of this conference is very appropriate, similar to the hot money in the A-share market igniting retail investors to follow up. Bitcoin once stood at a height that all global commodities admired thanks to the investment and trading of these well-known institutional enterprises. Now that its market value has been halved, what will the future of Bitcoin look like? Their views are crucial to the secondary market.

Musk and others did not seem to disappoint everyone. This was a Bitcoin rally that injected confidence in the bear market.

Musk returns with SpaceX. Can he still boost the market this time?

At The B Word conference, Musk, who was highly expected, once again released good news: not only Tesla, but also SpaceX, which he founded, holds Bitcoin. "I personally own Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin. SpaceX and Tesla also hold Bitcoin." This is the first time SpaceX has disclosed that it holds Bitcoin.

Musk said that supporting Bitcoin can improve the quality of our management of economic information. "In general, I support Bitcoin. Bitcoin may become the native currency of the Internet." Cathie Wood also gave a similar view, "Bitcoin does not require financial intermediaries, but its transfer can be confirmed by everyone."

In April, Musk tweeted that Tesla had sold some of its Bitcoin holdings. The transaction generated a net gain of about $272 million for Tesla. Although he has never disclosed how much crypto assets he owns, he has said that even his one-year-old son owns some Dogecoin.

Due to his high-profile "calling orders" words and deeds, the public opinion is full of accusations that Musk manipulated the market to make profits. He also responded to this at this conference, "If the price of Bitcoin falls, I will lose money." He said to the camera, "I may buy, but I won't sell. I will never do something like raising the price first and then selling it."

He said that in addition to SpaceX and Tesla stocks, the only three "most meaningful" assets he owns are BTC, DOGE and ETH. "Even after Tesla announced the suspension of Bitcoin payments, Tesla and I have never sold Bitcoin." He even said that Tesla will most likely start accepting Bitcoin as a payment method again.

Musk also admitted that he holds "far more" Bitcoin than Dogecoin or Ethereum. "The most ironic thing is that the cryptocurrency that started as a joke making fun of cryptocurrency eventually became the leading cryptocurrency." In addition, Musk also revealed that SpaceX's Starlink terminal may run a Bitcoin node in the future. "I have proposed placing a Bitcoin node in the SpaceX Starlink terminal to encourage more people to run Bitcoin."

Musk said SpaceX plays a "big role" in his vision for the future of Bitcoin, but he did not elaborate further on how SpaceX is advancing that vision.

"I want to see Bitcoin succeed," Musk said.

Carbon footprint is not a problem worth worrying about

Previously, Tesla once accepted Bitcoin as a payment method. In May of this year, this move was canceled by Musk. Subsequently, the price of Bitcoin fell below $40,000 for the first time since February. His explanation was that the carbon footprint caused by Bitcoin mining power consumption is not friendly to the environment. At that time, Bitcoin was deeply involved in the whirlpool of public opinion due to the carbon footprint issue and was questioned by public opinion. This issue was also the focus of discussion at this conference.

At the conference, Musk reiterated this point: "PoW is used too much in cryptocurrency, especially Bitcoin, and this is not necessarily good for cryptocurrency. You need to pay attention to one thing: the environment." Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and Musk debated around consensus mechanisms and energy consumption. Musk criticized the energy issues of PoW and was more inclined to support PoS. Dorsey firmly defended PoW, believing that PoS is relatively centralized and less secure.

"It looks like Bitcoin is turning more towards renewable energy." Musk pointed out that hydropower, geothermal and nuclear energy could all be good sources of energy for Bitcoin mining. Although positive trends have emerged, people need to be patient with Bitcoin. "It is impossible to increase the use of green energy by 1 to 3 times in such a short period of time."

“I would like to do more due diligence to confirm that the use of renewable energy is at or above 50% and that this number is trending upward. If so, Tesla will likely resume accepting Bitcoin.”

Nick Carter is a general partner at Castle Island Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that invests in startups in the public blockchain industry. At this conference, he was also a guest speaker to explain why Bitcoin's energy problem is not a concern. According to him, Bitcoin currently consumes only 0.26% of the world's electricity and 0.11% of all energy. And 39% of the energy used in mining is renewable energy. And the returns on these consumption are huge.

"As a neutral global currency network, Bitcoin has an effective claim to some social resources." Nick believes that Bitcoin's energy consumption is not without value. "This distributed ledger processes $10-20 billion a day, stores $600 billion in wealth, and can distribute synthetic goods to the world fairly and without intermediaries."

Cathie Wood, founder of Ark Invest, holds a similar view, “Bitcoin is the solution to inflation. I am convinced that Bitcoin will definitely be more environmentally friendly than gold mining or the traditional financial services industry. In many ways, it already is.”

A study by Cambridge University shows that since Chinese miners began to migrate in May, the United States has become a new mining hotspot in the world and has become the second largest country in the world in terms of Bitcoin computing power. The change in the geographical distribution of mining will greatly reduce the carbon footprint of cryptocurrencies. By the end of 2022, the United States is expected to account for 40% of the global computing power.

The United States has abundant energy resources in the world, and most of these energy resources are renewable energy. Compass CEO Whit Gibbs once estimated that more than 50% of Bitcoin mining in the United States may be supported by renewable energy.

"In the long run, renewable energy will be the cheapest energy, but it's not going to happen overnight," Musk said. "But as long as the mining community is committed and truly working to move to renewable energy, then obviously Tesla will support that."

"I hope it creates world peace."

As a well-known Bitcoin supporter, Cathie Wood, founder and CEO of Ark Invest, continued to be optimistic about Bitcoin during the live broadcast. "When I first read the Bitcoin white paper, I realized that Bitcoin was a very grand idea." He and other guests discussed the importance of Bitcoin as an inflation hedge. "There are a lot of emerging markets that are suffering from severe inflation - in other words, the purchasing power of these populations is declining. Therefore, they maintain their purchasing power by transferring funds to Bitcoin."

This move also applies to institutions. Wood said that companies should consider adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets, and that it would be "very useful" to include Bitcoin in the company's balance sheet.

Although many institutions currently hold Bitcoin, the current environment for institutions to hold Bitcoin is still not friendly. According to current accounting standards, when the price of Bitcoin falls, institutions must accrue losses on the falling part. On the contrary, the gains from the rising part of Bitcoin will only be confirmed when it is sold.

Wood suggested that "the Financial Accounting Standards Board should reconsider how to classify Bitcoin, and classifying it as an intangible asset may help solve this problem." If the classification is really expected to change, it will be a big boon to cryptocurrencies. "Just think about how high the explosive growth will be."

"For me, we should take the actions that are most likely to make the future better, and Bitcoin is most likely to make the future better," Musk said in the live broadcast. He also expressed his dissatisfaction with bank deposits. "Tesla's deposit banks in Europe have negative interest rates, which means you pay banks to keep your money. This is crazy!" He believes that Bitcoin can allow people to truly own their own property. "People must have their own private keys instead of relying on banks or private companies."

Dorsey holds a similar view. "There are many problems with the U.S. monetary policy, but Bitcoin may change all of this. It allows assets to no longer be restricted by third parties, and Bitcoin allows you to truly own your own assets." Musk is also optimistic about the monetary attributes of Bitcoin. "Bitcoin itself cannot become the world currency of the base layer, but it may become the second layer, depending on how it is implemented." Musk is optimistic about Bitcoin. "

Dorsey believes that "Bitcoin is resilient."

He pointed out that there are currently a lot of monopolies, and Bitcoin may help improve this environment. "But it will take some time." Dorsey has long been a long-term supporter of Bitcoin. The Twitter CEO's Twitter profile clearly reads "#bitcoin". He introduced in the live broadcast that the reason for his enthusiasm is the Bitcoin community. "What inspires me most is that the community has promoted the development of Bitcoin, which reminds me of the early Internet."

Musk also threw him an interesting question: Would Twitter consider accepting cryptocurrency as payment for advertising? Dorsey said "without a doubt." He pointed out that if crypto technology had existed at the beginning of the Internet, the advertiser model might not be so prevalent in the social media field.

"This is what pushed me to do this business - I learned a lot from the people who built Bitcoin." Dorsey said. "Now it is full of monopolies and individuals are eroded. What I hope is to create world peace." The history of Bitcoin also affected Square, which he founded. "Everything we create for Bitcoin, from hardware to software, will be open source and completely transparent."

There is no doubt that the three heavyweight guests in this discussion are all very enthusiastic about Bitcoin. They all believe that Bitcoin will profoundly improve our economic system and create a more friendly financial system.

“I hope it creates world peace,” Dorsey said.