Dorsey's giving out some narrative of reducing pollution by making mining more efficient. This has to be him just saying things the media wants to hear, because that simply doesn't work.<p>The pollution generated by bitcoin is not a factor of mining efficiency, its a factor of its price.<p>When bitcoin reaches $100,000, its pollution will be roughly equivalent to the pollution created from making $100,000 worth of energy. Obviously this is a rough estimation, but its pretty close. As a miner, if it only costs $80,000 in energy to produce one bitcoin, and you can sell it for $100,000, then you're gonna crank up the heat until you're closer to breaking even. So when 1 bitcoin reaches $1,000,000 it will take roughly $1,000,000 worth of energy to mine, and thereby create the pollution equivalent of $1,000,000 worth of energy.<p>Kind of makes you wonder if nakamoto saw this as a property of bitcoin, because that is one helluva cost if you think about it.
"2/Mining needs to be more efficient. Driving towards clean and efficient energy use is great for Bitcoin’s economics, impact, and scalability."<p>This seems like Dorsey doesn't understand how Bitcoin works, which is surprising<p>Making a more efficient miner will not reduce energy consumption, no more than designing lightweight bricks would allow you to build cheaper bank vaults
As it happens, the most widespread piece of employee feedback the last time Square surveyed, was that Jack is wasting too much of his time on crypto nonsense that has nothing to do with Square's actual business competencies.<p>I guess it wasn't taken to heart.