Bitcoin Surges Close To $40,000 After Elon Musk’s Meeting With Miners

On Monday evening, May 24, Bitcoin price jumped another 5% making a move above $38,000 after Elon Musk announced that he is currently in talks with North American Bitcoin miners.

Meeting Focused On Sustainable Cryptocurrency Mining Initiatives

Bitcoin is once again approaching $40,000 after Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he was in active talks with bitcoin miners about the digital currency’s long-term viability. The meeting resulted in a newly-formed Bitcoin Mining Council, focused on promoting the adoption of sustainable cryptocurrency mining initiatives.

“Spoke with North American Bitcoin miners. They committed to publish current & planned renewable usage and to ask miners WW to do so. Potentially promising,” wrote Musk in a tweet published Monday. On the announcement, the price of bitcoin jumped from $37,940 to $39,405.

Simultaneously, and in what appeared to be a coordinated effort, Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin (Tesla is second), revealed he had hosted a meeting between Elon Musk and executives from major bitcoin miners in North America, including Argo Blockchain, Blockcap, Core Scientific, Galaxy Digital, and HIVE Blockch.

“The newly-formed Bitcoin Mining Council is the next logical step in fostering a sectoral shift to renewable energy,” said Peter Wall, chief executive of Argo Blockchain, in a written statement to Forbes. Wall writes he “looks forward to joining Michael Saylor and other leading North American miners in working to future-proof an industry that must collectively improve sustainable mining practices and take ESG concerns seriously.”

Other mining companies have also confimed their involvement in the mining council. Marathon Digital Holdings and Hut 8 Mining have confirmed their participation and the group’s ambitions via tweets.

Since the news, almost all of the other major cryptocurrencies are trading higher. Ethereum’s price has risen more than 13% to $2,550.62 in the last 24 hours, while dogecoin has seen its price rise more than 7% to 34 cents a coin.

Related article | Analysts Expect Move to $20,000 High as Bitcoin Holds Key Supports

Bitcoin Is Facing A Changing Landscape

The announcement comes as the world’s attention turns to cryptocurrency mining operations. Apart from a sharper emphasis on bitcoin mining’s environmental effects, the industry is also facing a tightening crackdown by Chinese authorities on bitcoin mining and trading. According to research published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications, these factors have the potential to significantly disrupt the distribution and operations of the bitcoin mining landscape, where China accounted for more than 75% of total processing power on the network as of April 2020. China’s crypto mining hegemony is largely attributed to cheaper electricity prices and large undeveloped lands for pool construction.

Bitcoin mining requires vast amounts of energy. As a result, bitcoin has a carbon footprint comparable to that of New Zealand, producing 36.95 megatons of CO2 annually, according to Digiconomist.

Related article | Analysts Expect Ethereum to Surge to $445 as Buy-Side Demand Builds

Featured image from Unsplash, Charts from TradingView.

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