To assuage critics, Elon Musk and Michael Saylor announced late last month that Bitcoin miners in North America had agreed to form the Bitcoin Mining Council, an organization that would promote energy transparency and sustainable mining practices. To them, a Bitcoin mining council sounds a lot like OPEC or, worse, the Federal Reserve. The idea of Bitcoin mining was originally imagined as ‘one-CPU-one-vote’, where individuals around the world could run the Bitcoin software and join in recording transactions. As with most things, however, Bitcoin mining benefits from economies of scale. As a result, a small number of firms dominate the vast majority of Bitcoin mining.

Source: Mint June 06, 2021 17:26 UTC