- The World Economic Forum has jumped aboard the ‘Change The Code Not the Climate’ campaign
- The campaign is calling for Bitcoin to change to a “basic” shift to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism
- The World Economic Forum also stated in 2017 that Bitcoin would “consume more power than the world does today” by 2020
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has jumped on board the new ‘Change The Code Not the Climate’ campaign, but its credentials in the matter have immediately been called into question. The WEF posted a video on Twitter that pushes the narrative that Bitcoin should shift to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism rather than the current proof-of-work one, claiming that a “basic” change in coding could “virtually eliminate” Bitcoin’s energy use. However, history has told us that the WEF shouldn’t really be trusted with such pronouncements.
Change the Code Promotes “Basic” Code Change
Change The Code Not the Climate was launched a month ago, backed by Greenpeace alongside the Environmental Working Group and several groups battling Bitcoin mining facilities in their communities. The campaign uses data from Cambridge University, which admits that it uses “approximations…based on theoretical models that rely on specific assumptions” to come up with its figures, and argues that a “basic software code change” could see Bitcoin’s energy consumption drastically reduced.
However, while the end result of this assumption is true, the process is far from simple, as Ethereum is finding out. The video claims that it was “experts” who uncovered the “basic software code change”, but if this is the case then those experts would have known that it was far from basic, and would result in Bitcoin’s security resting with a few validators rather than a global network of miners, something that flies in the face of its fundamentals.
It can be assumed, therefore, that the group is intentionally playing down the difficulty of the switch in order to put pressure on the “30 key individuals” it says are responsible for the change.
World Economic Forum Has Previous
This isn’t the first tangle the WEF has had with Bitcoin, with a prior tweet in 2017 highlighting just how off the pace the organisation is when it comes to all things Bitcoin:
In 2020 Bitcoin will consume more power than the world does today https://t.co/Yn2rV1GBT3 pic.twitter.com/qDaMBQiDgr
— World Economic Forum (@wef) December 16, 2017
Clearly, this ridiculous claim has not come to pass, with Bitcoin using 0.2% of the world’s energy. Still, agendas gonna agenda.
