Elon Musk Shows Interest In Green Bitcoin Mining Operations Helping BTC Surge to $40,000

Tesla suspending Bitcoin payments has once again sparked the debate of Bitcoin’s carbon footprint and the need for green mining solutions. After bashing Bitcoin’s energy usage over the last few weeks, billionaire Elon Musk is now showing interest in green Bitcoin mining operations.

On Monday evening, May 24, Elon Musk tweeted: “Spoke with North American Bitcoin miners. They committed to publish current & planned renewable usage & to ask miners WW to do so. Potentially promising”.

Musk met executives from some of the top Bitcoin mining operators including Argo Blockchain, Hive Blockchain, Marathon Group, Galaxy Digital and Riot Blockchain. MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor said that he helped set up the meeting between the two parties.

These mining companies have now agreed to form a Bitcoin Mining Council that will promote transparent and sustainable initiatives for Bitcoin mining across the world. This council will standardise the energy reporting, pursue industry ESG goals while educating and growing the marketplace at the same time.

Well, Elon Musk’s successful meeting with the miners helped the BTC price to climb to $40,000 on Monday. However, Bitcoin seems to be under pressure in today’s trading session. At press time, Bitcoin was trading 5% down at $36,848 with a market cap of $689 billion.

Interestingly, Elon Musk’s interest in green crypto mining solutions come just at time when China announced its crackdown on Bitcoin mining and trading operations in the country. China accounts for a massive 65% of the Bitcoin hash rate. However, the recent crackdown is forcing local miners to move their rigs to overseas markets like North America and Europe.

Potentially, Musk sees a big opportunity here to lead the transformation towards the use of renewables for crypto mining operations. Despite his critical views on Bitcoin, Musk recently stated that he support crypto over fiat.

On the other hand, digital asset management firm One River Digital recently filed for a carbon-neutral Bitcoin ETF with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of India. The S1-Filing from One River on Monday notes that the One River Carbon Neutral Bitcoin Trust shall be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and will buy the carbon credits for emissions associated with Bitcoin present in the fund.

For this, One River has signed a deal with the Uruguay-based carbon credit platform Moss Earth. The digital asset manager will buy carbon credits in the form of MCO2 tokens  with each token representing a certified carbon credit held in a pool.