Standing on the side of cryptocurrency, forming a mining committee, and canceling Bitcoin payments, is Musk "showing loyalty" to the crypto community?

Original title: "From standing on the cryptocurrency side to forming a Bitcoin mining committee, Musk "shows loyalty" to the crypto community?"
By Sergio Goschenko and Kevin Helms
Compiled by: Tanker

On May 13, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted: “Tesla has suspended Bitcoin payments due to concerns about the environmental impact of Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency is a great idea and we believe it has a bright future, but this cannot come at a huge environmental cost. Tesla will not sell BTC, and once its mining method transitions to sustainable energy, we will continue to use it for transactions, and are currently considering using cryptocurrencies with lower energy consumption (<1% of Bitcoin's energy consumption).”

As a result, Musk's remarks became the "fuse" for the cryptocurrency market crash last week. The sensitive Bitcoin responded quickly and its price soon plummeted. At the time of writing this article, Coingecko data showed that the BTC price had fallen to US$38,054.11, a weekly drop of 13.0%.

Perhaps sensing that something was not right, Elon Musk began to "show his loyalty" to the crypto community.

“Crypto vs. Fiat? I’m on the side of crypto!”

As the world's richest man, Musk, a startup giant, is now the most famous "Internet celebrity" in the cryptocurrency industry. After previously stating that Bitcoin is "not environmentally friendly", he reiterated his loyalty to cryptocurrency and his preference for such emerging assets.

On May 22, in response to a tweet from a netizen, Musk wrote: "The real battle is actually between fiat currency and cryptocurrency. In short, I support cryptocurrency."

In fact, Musk has previously criticized the centralization of Bitcoin and forwarded an article about the influence of Bitcoin mining in China. The article pointed out that a Bitcoin mine in China suffered a flood disaster, which caused the computing power of the entire Bitcoin network to drop sharply. In response, Musk severely criticized:

“Bitcoin is actually highly centralized, with the vast majority of computing power controlled by a small number of mining (or computing power) companies.”

For environmental purposes, Tesla stopped accepting Bitcoin payments in early May, but Musk believes that other cryptocurrencies can solve Bitcoin's predicament, and his solution is Dogecoin (DOGE). In other words, he wants to make Dogecoin bigger and stronger in the future.

Last week, it was announced that he had begun negotiations with Dogecoin protocol developers to increase the throughput of the Dogecoin blockchain and make it more efficient and decentralized than Proof of Work (PoW). By optimizing and improving Dogecoin, he hopes to achieve his stated goals in the near future, namely:

“Ideally, if the block size increases tenfold, Dogecoin transaction speeds will increase, transaction fees will drop 100 times, and Dogecoin will win.”

Musk vs. Vitalik Buterin

In this way, Musk seems to have once again proven himself to be a big believer in cryptocurrency — so yes, Musk is indeed a supporter of cryptocurrency, but understanding his thought process, you might think he is different from other cryptocurrency supporters.

First of all, Musk is not a "stubborn" cryptocurrency supporter, but he is actively trying to change the way cryptocurrency works to make it cleaner for the environment. Just after Musk proposed a plan to expand Dogecoin tenfold, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a paper on the scalability limitations of blockchain, pointing the finger at Musk.

Vitalik Buterin believes that the sharp increase in blockchain scalability and throughput may lead to extreme centralization problems and damage the basic properties of blockchain. He emphasized the necessity of decentralized management, especially eliminating the risk of single point failure in the network and then enjoying protection from coordinated attacks. Decentralization cannot be achieved without the permission of ordinary users to freely run nodes.

Soon, Musk responded to this, but only one sentence: "Vitalik Buterin is afraid of Dogecoin."

Forming a Bitcoin Mining Committee

On May 25, Musk tweeted that he had met with several mining companies, which promised to report current and planned use of renewable energy electricity and encourage miners around the world to follow suit.

The meeting was chaired by Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor, and the participating companies included Argo Blockchain, Blockcap, Core Scientific, Galaxy Digital, Hive Blockchain, Hut 8 Mining, Marathon and Riot Blockchain. They are committed to forming a "Bitcoin Mining Council" to achieve the following goals:

1. Promoting transparency into energy use and accelerating sustainable development initiatives in global Bitcoin mining.

2. Standardize disclosure of Bitcoin mining energy consumption.

3. Pursuit is based on pursuing a wide range of environmental, social and corporate governance objectives related to Bitcoin mining.

4. Educate the market on how Bitcoin mining operates.

Michael Saylor expressed a very optimistic attitude towards the formation of the "Bitcoin Mining Committee" on Twitter. He said: "I was very happy to hold a meeting with Musk and North America's leading Bitcoin miners yesterday. The miners have agreed to form a Bitcoin Mining Committee to increase transparency in energy use and accelerate sustainable development plans for Bitcoin mining worldwide."

What do you think of Musk's series of actions to "show loyalty" to the crypto community after criticizing Bitcoin for being environmentally unfriendly and withdrawing the Bitcoin payment option, especially persuading Bitcoin miners to form a Bitcoin Mining Committee to promote the use of renewable energy?