The European Commission (EC) is about to take a draconian and unscientific stance towards Bitcoin that can not only pave the way for an EU mining ban, but could have far-reaching consequences for the entire global Bitcoin community. Links to resources and

Converted from Twitter, original here.

Plebs, Bitcoin miners, human rights defenders unite!

The European Commission (EC) is about to take a draconian and unscientific stance towards Bitcoin that can not only pave the way for an EU mining ban, but could have far-reaching consequences for the entire global Bitcoin community.

Context: The EC is developing a methodology to calculate and mitigate the environmental impact of Bitcoin. It includes a proposal to measure all crypto-assets resource consumption "per transaction", and only evaluates the negative impact of Bitcoin using a suite of suite of reports that have ben financially backed by Central Banks and Ripple Corporation. This is a nonsense metric that was been previously debunked by Cambridge University in 2018.

The fact that the EC have ignored both the science, and the sea-change in the Bitcoin ESG narrative this year shows that their intentions have nothing to do with sustainability, and everything to do with protecting intrenched interests who could be disrupted by Bitcoin. If the EC wins, BTC will be officially labelled "an environmentally harmful asset that undermines sustainability goals for the EU".

It will also enshrine the ECs right to use bogus-metrics to evaluate environmental impact, while ignoring quality peer-reviewed research showing the positive environmental externalities of Bitcoin.

They will then promote this standards/labelling globally.

What can you do?

• Send a draft of 1-5 pages to @jardemalie or @lyudakozlovska using succinct objective language and evidence, by THIS FRIDAY 7 DEC or email: [email protected]
  

In your submission, highlight:

✅ why and how Bitcoin can be a net-benefit to the environment
✅ point out that a framework which only evaluate only negative externalities of a technology is incomplete, unobjective/ unscientific
✅ cite high quality references. Show examples of how Bitcoin mining can help meet the EUs sustainability goals (for example: WOSTP has already written that "vented methane based crypto-asset mining is more likely to help than hinder the US Govts climate objectives")
❌ DO NOT "it's energy use is justified because", "Other assets use more energy", or debating whether climate change is occurring or use language that personally attacks any one
✅ DO highlight that every technology initially has a carbon footprint, use evidence to show that emissions are not increasing and that there is a realistic chance Bitcoin can become the first industry to fully mitigate emissions without offsets, point out known limitations in current models, use your own examples of Bitcoin's positive environmental impact that are less known
✅ Retweet this message, and mobilize other honeybadgers

Currently, the EU relies on reports like this: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Bitcoin-Final.pdf. Counter these claims, showing evidence of where they are provably false, misleading due to missing context, inaccurate, or no-longer-true.

Now is the time to channel your time, passion, and brain into defending freedom. We do not have the resources, the entrenched powers, the ability to spread FUD widely through mainstream news channels that the opponents of Bitcoin do. We don't agree on everything as Bitcoiners. But we all agree on one thing: that is the need for a global currency together with global mining that cannot be centrally controlled, attacked, manipulated and suppressed.

Today's the day to fight for the continuation of that freedom.

Original EU Report on Bitcoin which contains ample examples of statements you can rebut https://europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2023/740083/IPOL_STU(2023)740083_EN.pdf

Here's some examples of:

1. Evidence of bias in mainstream bitcoin environmental impact reporting: https://batcoinz.com/a-tale-of-two-articles/

2. Positive benefits of Bitcoin mining water security: https://batcoinz.com/how-bitcoin-can-help-nations-out-of-water-scarcity/

3. Limitations in current models of Bitcoin environmental impact: https://batcoinz.com/the-bitcoin-facts-that-every-esg-investment-committee-should-know/

4. How to do an evidenced-based rebuttal: https://batcoinz.com/rebuttal-of-greenpeacusa-report-on-bitcoin/

5. Contextualized data that challenges existing and incomplete models with known limitations: https://batcoinz.com/comparing-bitcoin-mining-to-other-industries-energy-mix/

6. How Bitcoin helps Methane Mitigation: https://batcoinz.com/50-landfills-mining-bitcoin-a-zero-emission-bitcoin-network/

7. A more up-to-date model than Cambridges' (also the one that Bloomberg Intelligence now use instead of Cambridge's model which is both incomplete and 23 months out of date): https://batcoinz.com/beest/