Environmental Groups to Spend Another $1M on Ads for Bitcoin Code Change After the Merge

The "Change the Code, Not the Climate" campaign is upping its efforts following Ethereum's switch to proof of stake.

By Eliza Gkritsi

Sep 15, 2022 at 2:48 p.m. UTC

Updated Sep 15, 2022 at 4:38 p.m. UTC

More pressure promised on Bitcoin's energy usage (Anne Nygard/Unsplash) — (Anne Nygard/Unsplash)

Eliza Gkritsi

Eliza Gkritsi is CoinDesk's crypto mining reporter based in Asia.

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Environmental groups pledged to spend another $1 million on online ads to pressure the Bitcoin community to change the network's code in order to reduce energy consumption.

Earlier on Thursday, the Ethereum blockchain – which underpins the world's second-largest cryptocurrency by market value– changed its consensus mechanism from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS), doing away with the need for energy-intensive computing power. Bitcoin, a PoW network, has been facing mounting criticism over its energy use, which is on par with some small countries. These criticisms were echoed in part in a report on bitcoin mining published by the White House last week.

"Ethereum’s energy-efficient ‘merge’ leaves bitcoin as lone cryptocurrency climate polluter," wrote Environmental Working Group (EWG) in a Thursday statement, which along with Greenpeace USA, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen and other small environmental organizations launched a campaign to change the bitcoin code earlier this year.

On top of the new ad funds, Greenpeace USA started an online petition calling on multi-trillion-dollar asset manager Fidelity Investments to help take the lead in pushing Bitcoin to switch to PoS.

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