The details and thinking behind the formation of the Bitcoin Mining Council, has been explained by MicroStrategy CEO, Michael Saylor
After Saylor brokered a successful meeting between Elon Musk and several top North American Bitcoin mining firms, the council was formed on May 25. Across the globe to do so as well, the miners involved will provide current and planned renewable usage transparency, and will lobby other mining opera
Saylor emphasized that the council was formed out of the need to provide greater transparency on the Bitcoin mining industry, and promote sustainable initiatives moving forward, speaking at the virtual consensus 2021 conference.
“The only reason we had the meeting is because we wanted to ensure the success of a decentralized cryptocurrency, and the source of decentralization is energy usage,” Saylor said.
“It turns out that Bitcoin miners don’t actually have a good forum for communicating how they generate their energy. We don’t have a standard model for Bitcoin energy usage right now, and we don’t have a future forecast model that we commonly use.”
However the Bitcoin Mining Council has proven controversial in some quarters with comparisons to the oil production cartel OPEC. Podcaster Marty Bent, the co-founder of Great American Mining, which utilizes wasted gas from energy plants to power its Bitcoin mining operations — drew comparisons to the controversial Bitcoin scaling plans emerging out of the 2017 New York Agreement, in his May 24 newsletter:
“Do they not recall the last time there was a closed door meeting that involved stakeholders who attempted to speak on behalf of an entire industry?”
But Saylor was quick to rebuff notions there was anything clandestine or non-transparent about the meeting. “If it was a secret meeting, I wouldn’t have told millions of people the next day that it was a secret meeting. Trust me, you know, we told everybody in the world that we had a meeting,” he said.