Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX founder has turned from a hero of the Bitcoin community to a villain of sort pretty quick after his outlandish energy consumption claims of the Bitcoin network, post discontinuing Bitcoin payment option for buying Tesla cars. Musk’s recent attack on the Bitcoin network’s energy consumption seems a bit peculiar and some say it is motivated as well since Tesla cars depend heavily on clean energy subsidiaries from the government.

While there is no denying the fact that the Bitcoin network consumes comparatively more energy than other digital assets, many forget to mention that a majority of this energy comes from clean renewable sources. Another misconception is Proof-of-work mining consensus waste the energy in solving a complex equation and has no real output, well the energy consumption goes toward securing the network which a centralized banking system spends many folds higher when compared to the Bitcoin network’s energy consumption.

If Bitcoin’s Mining Consensus is an Issue Why Musk is Promoting Dogecoin?

Dogecoin, the meme currency with infinite supply that makes use of the PoW mining consensus seems to be the top priority of the tech billionaire something which he has been shilling for quite some time now and can’t take a backseat given many have invested millions based on his tweets. However, Dogecoin makes use of the same mining consensus as Bitcoin and doesn’t have the foundation of sound money either. While Musk is known for trolling but even then many can’t wrap their head around the fact that someone of his caliber can help fuel a FUD that has been debunked many times before.

Working with Doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency. Potentially promising.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2021

Musk recently tweeted about working with Dogecoin developers to make it more efficient which is kind of funny considering the developer activity on the network is near negligible over the past 3 years.

The conspiracy theories behind Musk’s Bitcoin bashing range from keeping his ‘clean energy crusader’ image intact especially after the success of space, other theories suggest Musk might be looking to launch a digital token of his own which is why he is demeaning the most popular digital asset that has passed the year-long scrutiny to become a growing choice as a store of value.

About Author

An engineering graduate, Prashant focuses on UK and Indian markets. As a crypto-journalist, his interests lie in blockchain technology adoption across emerging economies.