0/7

Waited 34 months for this moment!

In March '22 I said that Bitcoin mining helps avoid expensive grid upgrades and decarbonize grids, a lot of non-Bitcoiners were skeptical

Now, a Duke University Report confirms all this and more



Report TL;DR
👇 nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/sites/default/… 1. More flexible load can mean avoiding grid upgrades

"To the extent a new load can temporarily curtail its electricity consumption from the grid during these peak stress periods, it may be able to connect while deferring—or even avoiding—the need for certain [grid] upgrades"

1/17
You've read many times Bitcoin is bad for the environment. But now you're confused. The media, sustainability magazines, even peer reviewed journals are saying it can support climate action.

Next-level greenwash?

There a reason the message has changed. Let's dive in
👇 2/17
The change in message has less to do with Bitcoin than something psychologists call "negativity bias"

Imagine it's 100,000BCE. You see an animal silhouette on the horizon. Is it your food, or you're it's food?Negativity bias says "assume in the negative and run!" (away)

1/10

10 images that forever changed our perceptions about Bitcoin and energy

1. Rhodes et al showed that flexible datacenters like Bitcoin mining allow grid owners to stack more intermittent renewable energy sources onto the grid

Source:
🧵lancium.com/wp-content/upl… 2. This powerful chart from @woonomic showed that Bitcoin mining is now more sustainable than the industries it can in theory obviate (banking, as a method of transacting. Gold, as a store of value)

Source: woocharts.com/esg-bitcoin-mi…

1/7
Slowly then suddenly

This thread lists the recent

✅4 sustainability magazines (& a climate conference)
✅4 ESG charts
✅5 Independent Reports
✅11 recent media reports
✅8 peer reviewed publications
✅3 reports from WEF

covering Bitcoin's environment benefits
👇 4 sustainability magazines covering Bitcoin mining's positive environmental impacts

1. Bitcoin mining could help wind and solar development (Anthropocene Magazine)

2. How Bitcoin is aiding the renewable transition (Recharge Magazine)

3. Landfill Gas methane mitigated with Bitcoin Mining (Renewable Energy Magazine)

4. Bitcoin mining is more sustainable than previously thought (One Green Planet) …

... and the San Francisco climate conference also recently featured a panel discussion on the environmental benefits on Bitcoin mininganthropocenemagazine.org/2023/12/wind-a…
rechargenews.com/energy-transit…
renewableenergymagazine.com/biogas/compani…
onegreenplanet.org/environment/sh…

1/9

There is $35.7Tr in sovereign funds

✅Almost all of them want to buy Bitcoin
❌Almost none of them can

Why?

And more importantly, how do we change that?
(a thread) 2/9

Sovereign funds hold the wealth of nation states.

@saylor recently said "You'll see sovereigns wealth funds move before the sovereign"

Days ago, Wisconsin announced it had bought~$100M of #BTC

reuters.com/markets/curren…

1/5

Africa has validated the usecase for Bitcoin as a medium of exchange

"𝟳𝟬% 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗹𝗹 #Bitcoin 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 $𝟭,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝗲𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗿 𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗻𝘁"

source: chainalysis.com/blog/africa-cr…
"Crypto has penetrated key markets and become an important part of many residents’ day-to-day lives."

With the combination of autocracy and high inflation, use of Bitcoin in Nigeria is off the charts

1/6

Many people don't realise how much peer reviewed scientific literature came out in the last 18 mths endorsing Bitcoin mining's net-positive environmental potential

Here's 5 of the most recent publications with
♻️source
♻️headline
♻️TL;DR summary

🧵 2/6

How Bitcoin Can Support Renewable Energy Development and Climate Action
(Cornell University)

source:

TL;DR:
Bitcoin mining helps renewable developers generate more profits that is typically re-invested, accelerating the renewable transition pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac…

🧵

How 3 EU Central Banks are working together to try to weaken Bitcoin

What action each of them has taken

What are their next moves

What we must do

👇 First, some background

During The GFC, Central Bankers realised the risk people could discover our Central Bank based financial system had been transferring from the poor to the rich for generations.

The injustice of bailing those who caused the crisis led to the Occupy Movement.

🧵While we were sleeping, the European Commission (via ESMA & ECB) has been creating a report which they plan to label bitcoin
-environmentally harmful
-a threat to EU energy security
-a haven for financial criminals

Paving the way for 2025 de facto EU bans on BTC & BTC mining 2/5

How we know:

ODFoundation founders @LyudaKozlovska and @jardemalie have done the hard work for us of reading through every EC document. They've been fighting this for 18 months. @stephanlivera recently interviewed them on his podcast. .

https://twitter.com/i/status/1747603996469067936

For the love of God, in rebutting the provably false claim Bitcoin uses too much water, please do NOT say "water is part of a natural cycle so it doesn't matter"

It's not that simple

You'll sound ignorant

There's a simpler reason the "Bitcoin and Water" attack is wrong

🧵 Yes, water cannot be destroyed. Yes, it's a renewable resource. That's not the point. Overuse of water can absolutely decimate a local environment, and the water that evaporates does not necessarily come back to the same place.

1/7

Within just 53 days this year, the ESG narrative on Bitcoin flipped

This tweet documents the 5 key events that led to the flip

It happened so fast that many of the world's Investment Committees have not yet caught up

Let's help them!
🧵 Narrative Shift 1: The KPMG Report (1 Aug)

Source: kpmg.com/us/en/articles…

1/8

A few people asked "How is methane extracted from Landfills?"

Here goes:

1. Modern landfills already all have hundreds of perforated vertical wells that go deep into the landfill

Why? - Health & safety: landfill gas (LFG) build-up risks subsidence - dangerous if

🧵 you're driving heavy equipment over the surface

There's also explosion-risk, given the high methane content (50-55%)

2. Many landfills (70% of landfills in the US) allow LFG to vent straight into the atmosphere

That's why it's on track to be our biggest methane emission source

1/4

Congratulations to @Vespene_Energy for launching their 1.6MW Landfill gas powered #Bitcoin mining operation in Marathon County

The project will mitigate 20,000 tonnes of CO2e per yr

That's the impact of taking 4,300 cars off the road for a year

This is just the start

🧵 2/4

Vespene are the 2nd company to start mining Bitcoin from Landfill Gas. Nodalpower began in 2022 and now has a total of 4.8 MW of projects.

Together, Vespene and @NodalPower produce 6.4 MW of power from previously flared methane gas,

Mitigating total 80,000 tonnes CO2e

1/7

Forget everything you think you knew about Bitcoin, it's our #1 way to reduce our future #1 source of our #1 lever to reduce climate change.

Here's why

🧵 2/7

Firstly, methane has been called "our strongest lever to reduce climate change by the United Nations Environment Program.

It's 84x more warming than CO2, and rising at a parabolic rate.

1/7
2023: finally our financial media are looking at data and getting it right on Bitcoin & the environment

From time to time we get a throwback article recycling some old myths

The latest is from @finance_magnates

Here's why the article is flawed:
🧵
financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency… Data > assertions

First thing you notice is that no data, no charts, and no research links. Just assertions like

"When compared to conventional banking systems, cryptocurrency mining's high energy consumption is clear."

I'll let the data do the talking on that claim
👇

1/9

Incredibly, in 2032 Landfills are projected to become the biggest source of our strongest lever to reduce climate change

Here's why that's true, and more importantly how we can pull that lever 2/9

Until 2022, we thought our methane emission sources looked like this

source: worldbank.org/en/news/factsh…

Bitcoin mining is essential for the renewable transition

Here's why in one less-than-10-tweet thread

To achieve net zero, IEA report we will need 10x more demand response

That's grid jargon for "really really flexible consumers who can shut off and power on any time"

🧵 IEA say we need 10x more demand response (DR) to achieve net-zero because solar/wind are unpredictable and intermittent in their supply

To counterbalance that, they need a lot of really flexible customers

Otherwise grids can have too much or too little power (blackout risk)

1/4

@woonomic was in the country, so we teamed up to create something we've planned for a bit:

4 Dynamic Bitcoin ESG Charts

Whatever your view of ESG, Govt & Institutional Investors need this data. Now we have it

1. shows Bitcoin's progress to 52.6% sustainable energy
👇 2/4 Total Emissions

This shows that since the China-ban the previous rising emissions trend has reversed.

Network emissions are trending downwards, even as hashrate and electricity consumption increase

Miners switching to sustainable energy is a big driver for this

1/4

Having a model means we can start building charts

Here's 4 new charts for Bitcoin & Energy

#Bitcoin has grown its sustainable energy mix @ 6.2% p.a from Jan 2020

* 6.2% growth rate is faster than any major industry
* 52.6% Sustainable mix is ⬆️ any major industry

🧵 2/4

Bitcoin Emissions have trended down since the China ban

Due to known model omissions, CCAF (over)estimates emissions at 58.58 MTCO2e (ccaf.io/cbeci/ghg/index)

With off-grid mining factored in, the figure is 33% lower at 39.33 Mt CO2e

(0.079% of global CO2e emissions)

1/24
On Jan 31 @greenpeaceusa continued it's paid campaign against a technology that the research consistently says is net environment positive with its most sensationalist and ludicrous heading yet

greenpeace.org/usa/american-f…

Here's my response @AnnieMLeonard @ebony_4_justice 2/24

Rather than research you've actually doubled down on more paid (& failed) misinformation, courtesy of $5+1 Million from billionaire altcoiner Chris Larsen who has a vested interest attacking Bitcoin

Faux environmental concern: his pretext
You've become his paid attack dog

1/13

By using Proof of Work, Bitcoin has
*12 humanitarian benefits
*21 environmental benefits
*5 env'l drawbacks
*weighted env'l benefit:cost ratio = 31:1

On Proof of Stake it would've had
*0 humanitarian benefits
*0 env'l benefits
*0 env'l drawbacks
👇

https://twitter.com/DSBatten/status/1613364801442549762?s=20&t=WaSdY13jQc7H7kLBkFiiHg

2/13

IOW, Proof of work is far more ESG than Proof of Stake (which'd be a digital lobotomy for BTC)

The 12 humanitarian benefits already benefitting >1 million people are

1. Providing a path for 14 African nations beyond financial colonisation (the Central African Franc)