• Greenpeace USA published an art piece called the „Skull of Satoshi“ to depict the „ravenous consumption of fossil fuels“ by Bitcoin (BTC).
• Proponents of Bitcoin have mostly been amused by the piece and have quickly made it a meme within the community.
• Greenpeace’s goal is to push developers to make Bitcoin a proof-of-stake (PoS) coin instead — like Ethereum, which transitioned from PoW to PoS in 2022.
Greenpeace Targets Bitcoin
Greenpeace USA recently published an art piece called the „Skull of Satoshi“ as part of its year-long campaign against Bitcoin (BTC). The artwork depicts shadowy coders under a skull made of computer hardware with a backdrop of various industrial structures related to energy production, meant to represent the environmental hazards posed by BTC mining. Greenpeace’s goal is to push developers to transition Bitcoin into a proof-of-stake (PoS) coin instead — like Ethereum, which completed its transition from PoW to PoS in 2022.
Crypto Community Laughs It Off
The crypto community has largely responded with amusement towards this latest attempt at vilifying BTC via art installation. Analysis revealed that the hardware used in the skull was outdated and mostly employed tech that had nothing to do with Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. Additionally, most of the structures depicted were Nuclear reactor cooling towers, which emit water vapor and have no adverse impact on the environment compared to fossil fuels. Many even joked about buying the skull for use as decoration in their mining setups.
Change The Code Campaign
In 2021, Greenpeace launched its “Change The Code” campaign targeting Bitcoin specifically for its high electricity consumption during Proof-of-Work validation processes. The organization hoped that this would become a symbol of environmental destruction caused by BTC; however, it appears that their efforts were ineffective and only served further fuel memes within the crypto community.
Proof -Of- Work Vs Proof -Of Stake
Bitcoin currently requires large amounts of computing power in order for miners to compete for rewards associated with validating blocks on its network. This is where proof-of-work validation comes into play – each miner competes against all other miners on the network by taking up computational resources and energy in order to be rewarded with new BTC tokens after successfully validating blocks on their own system first. However, this process can be seen as expensive due to all these resources being spent just so one entity can acquire more tokens than others – thus leading organizations such as Greenpeace calling for developers transitioning bitcoin into a proof-of stake model instead – where validators are rewarded based on how many coins they already hold rather than expending computational resources for competition amongst miners .
Conclusion
Ultimately, it seems unlikely that any serious action will come out from Greenpeace’s efforts against bitcoin due largely in part because of how ineffective their attempts at vilification have been received by crypto enthusiasts around the world who view them more as lighthearted jokes than anything else . Despite this , it remains important that organizations continue raising awareness about both cryptocurrencie‘ environmental impact , and ways we can work together towards reducing our global carbon footprint .