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The new Bitcoin Mining Council has no intention of altering the cryptocurrency’s software and merely wants to promote sustainable energy practices and transparency in the industry, a founding member said.
The council, spearheaded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, will respect bitcoin’s fungibility, and does not advocate discrimination between so-called clean and dirty coins, said Peter Wall, CEO of Argo Blockchain.
“We’re not talking about Bitcoin code or block size or anything related to changing the nature of Bitcoin,” said Wall, whose publicly traded company was one of a handful of mining firms that met with Saylor and Musk over the weekend. “We all love Bitcoin the way it is, as a decentralized, permissionless system.”
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Further, “discussions with the group so far have been very clear that one 1 BTC is 1 BTC, and that the fungibility and essential properties of Bitcoin shouldn’t be changed,” Wall said in an interview Monday evening.
In the hours since Musk and Saylor revealed the meeting on Twitter Monday, hardened Bitcoin veterans have been comparing it to the controversial and ultimately unsuccessful New York Agreement of 2017. That closed-door gathering of startup executives was a major flashpoint in a highly acrimonious debate over how best to scale the Bitcoin network, and widely viewed as inimical to the currency’s ethos of leaderlessness.
As then, many users are questioning how a small group of companies and two charismatic figureheads can profess to lead a global community where, by design, no one is in charge.
“It’s extremely concerning that this group of bitcoiners wandered into this ‘meeting’ without any sense of self-awareness,” wrote Marty Bent, co-founder of Great American Mining, in his newsletter Monday. ”Do they not recall the last time there was a closed-door meeting that involved industry stakeholders who attempted to speak on behalf of an entire industry? How did they think this would turn out? The hubris is astounding.”
Wall said such concerns are unfounded in this case.
“This isn’t the start of OPEC,” he quipped. “The group is a way to get together and discuss. We are all independent, decentralized miners who have formed a voluntary group to influence the industry and each other.”
The group is not exclusive, he added, though it is still working out mechanisms for other mining operations to join. “This is an international challenge for Bitcoin and needs to be addressed on an international level.”