The Mozilla Foundation recently paused its ability to accept cryptocurrencies as donations. The development has taken place following backlash from several prominent people, including one of the Mozilla project’s founders.
The Mozilla Foundation is in charge of the Firefox browser’s development. On 6th January 2022, the foundation has acknowledged the concerns that are in place regarding the potential environmental impacts of cryptocurrencies. The foundation has expressed that it is in the process of review of its prevailing policies for crypto donations which had begun in 2014. They are attempting to figure out if the policy matches their climate goals.
The foundation recognizes decentralized web technology as among the most important areas to explore. They further acknowledge that since they have started accepting crypto donations, a range of factors has transformed. The Mozilla foundation expressed these matters in a recent tweet. They have further stated that they will be prompt in publicly sharing the updates over the review over social media.
The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit firm based in the United States. The backlash over crypto donations had initiated when the foundation had invited people to make donations through a range of crypto tokens, such as Bitcoin.
Jamie Zawinski, one of Mozilla’s founders has expressed dismay through a tweet, over the development bought forth by the foundation. He believes that all people involved with the project should be ashamed ‘of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters’ (sic).
Peter Linss, similarly, is the founder of Gecko, the engine that powers Mozilla. He became a part of the conversation over Twitter and has expressed that ‘it was meant to be better than this’ (sic).
This is an instance of the firm facing backlash and considering distancing itself from Bitcoin due to environmental concerns. Among major firms, this has happened in the past as well. In May 2021, Tesla had halted accepting bitcoin as payment for its cars and other vehicles. This was merely a few months following the introduction of the option.
Elon Musk had stated that Tesla found itself to be deeply concerned regarding the rapidly increasing usage of fossil fuels such as coal, which is a must for Bitcoin mining. Weeks following this statement, Musk said that in all likelihood, his company will be willing to accept Bitcoin afresh for vehicle payments after 50% of all energy that is used for mining cryptocurrencies is renewable.
The environmental footprint of Bitcoin has been a matter of concern, and how various tokens are created has come under scrutiny several times.
In the case of Etherium and Bitcoin a mechanism known as ‘proof-of-work’ powers the networks. This is for mining the fresh blocks for each currency.
Design-wise, the calculations for mining have become more complex across the years with the growth of networks. An entire fleet of new firms has come to prominence that uses GPUs, thousands in number and all through the day, attempting to solve the puzzle.
Annually, the energy consumption of Bitcoin is a staggering 148 terawatt-hours. This is more than the energy consumption of Argentina, the Netherlands, or the UAE. A single Bitcoin transaction consumes 2,106.37 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is the same as the amount of power consumed by an average American household over 72.2 days.
The staunch supporters of cryptocurrency have often been found disputing these findings, or expressing why cryptocurrencies are worth the high energy consumption.
Across the past few months gone by, the industry has come to discover a broader divide. A few of web3’s fundamental value propositions have been challenged by critics. Just as an instance, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s founder, and a Bitcoin supporter does not find himself in agreement with the assertion that it is not the VCs who reap most profits from web3 projects.
Another noteworthy development in the field is that several firms have cut back on their web3 ambitions. Because of this discord, exploration of crypto and NFTs was paused in November when an outcry was created by those opposed to the idea. Just as an instance GSC Game World, which is a gaming firm has canceled its plan for including NFT in its upcoming title “STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl”. This was after several gamers presented strong feedback.
Tesla Story
As mentioned in the article, climate backlash has led several major firms to reconsider their involvement with cryptocurrencies. This is an important issue not to be ignored, several industry experts believe. Let us consider the Tesla story in further detail. Tesla bought $1.5 B in Bitcoin and may accept cryptocurrency as payment in the future. This development took place in February 2021 and was after Musk chose to stop accepting payments for Tesla cars in cryptocurrencies. The latter development took place merely months after the cryptocurrency payment option was opened for buyers.
An investment in such a large block of the chain is noteworthy news. These developments augured well for Bitcoin, whose price rose almost instantly by 7%, and became over $40,000 per coin.
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