JAKARTA - The latest report from The New York Times on Bitcoin mining entitled The Real-World Costs of the Digital Race for Bitcoin, has caused controversy among BTC supporters. Some of them even criticized the report on Twitter, and said that the data used in the report was unilaterally selected.
In the article, The NYT states that Bitcoin mining has a very large'selera' and claims that its energy use is as much as all of its residences in New York City. However, many Bitcoin supporters disagree with the claim.
Daniel Batten, an environmental, social and governance analyst at Bitcoin (ESG), pointed out that The NYT article drastically increased the use of fossil fuels by BTC miners.
According to Batten, the emission rate is considered to be exaggerated by 81.7%. He also added that there are 26 Bitcoin miners in the United States and Canada who use 90% of sustainable energy to run their mining activities, but The NYT chooses only two miners with the least power of renewable energy.
Several other Bitcoin proponents have also criticized the report. For example, Troy Cross stated that The NYT article uses "marginal emission accountability" to prove its narrative, and is selective in implementing it only for carbon emissions, not the overall generation of electricity. There were also some errors in the report, such as the name of the city where one of the BTC mining facilities in Texas is located, which was later fixed by The NYT.
Although the high level of energy consumption for Bitcoin mining is indeed a topic of debate, mining is very important for blockchain. Not only is it used to verify transactions, mining also makes it decentralized and adds to the security layer.
According to a Bitcoin Mining Council report for the fourth quarter of 2022, the Bitcoin network has become a leader in sustainable energy use, with 58.9% of its energy coming from renewable energy sources.
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