Ripple CEO Says Bitcoin PoW Energy Use Makes Square Target of Biden’s Climate Change Agenda
Lucas Cacioli Nov 10, 2020 03:15
Ripple CEO thinks Bitcoin’s PoW energy consumption makes public companies who invested heavily in BTC, like Square, potential targets of Joe Biden’s climate change agenda.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse thinks Bitcoin’s massive energy consumption through proof-of-work (PoW) could make public companies like Square, who invested heavily in BTC, potential targets of US election winner Joe Biden’s climate change agenda. Garlinghouse used the opportunity to highlight XRP's superior energy efficiency.
President-elect Joe Biden is predicted to realign the United States with the global climate change agenda and could put requirements on public companies to disclose green house gas (GHG) emissions. Ripple’s CEO Garlinghouse took to twitter to single out Square and said Jack Dorsey’s payments company should pay attention after their $50 million dollar BTC investment.
On Monday Nov. 10, Ripple CEO Garlinghouse leant his comments to an earlier tweet from NYT politics that highlighted the incoming president’s previously proposed measure on climate change. The tweet outlined Biden’s promise to rejoin the Paris Agreement, which was snubbed by the Trump administration in 2017.
The Ripple CEO tweeted that President-elect Biden will be much tougher on climate change than Trump and require all public companies to disclose their GHG production. Garlinghouse also singled out Jack Dorsey’s Square, saying the payments firm should pay attention to the new guidelines expected from the Biden administration.
The Ripple CEO said:
“Biden to require public companies to disclose climate change-related activities and GHG emissions in their operations. Love to see the action on climate change - first NYDFS, now this. Public companies holding BTC (ahem Square) -- may want to pay attention.”
The power consumption of the Bitcoin proof-of-work (PoW) network has been a huge point of contention for the premier cryptocurrency. In a publication on the Ripple website entitled, “The Environmental Impact: Cryptocurrency Mining vs. Consensus”, Bitcoin’s PoW power consumption is used to highlight the superiority of Ripple’s XRP token.
Ripple compares power usage through light bulbs explaining that every 1 million XRP transactions uses enough power to a lightbulb for 79,000 hours, while 1 million BTC transactions on Bitcoin’s PoW network would power the lightbulb for 4.51 billion hours.
Public Companies Pay Attention
The has been a slew of publicly traded companies that have invested massively into Bitcoin as of late, which according to Garlinghouse may be an issue for them as given the potential incoming green compliance legislation.
Ripple CEO Garlinghouse pointed to Square in his tweet. Last month Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and payments processing service Square, publicly tweeted that Square had invested $50 million of the company's holdings into Bitcoin purchasing 4,709 BTC.
If Square should take notice of the Biden administration’s incoming plan for climate change, then MicroStrategy who has also purchased 38,250 Bitcoin as its reserve treasury asset—just under $600 million at the time of writing—should definitely sit up and take notice of the Democrat’s green agenda.
Image source: Shutterstock