Caleb Chen

The end of Bitcoin mining gaslighting in mainstream media Litmaps, a powerful research tracking tool, reveals that patient zero for all junk science on Bitcoin's environmental impact was a single 6 page "commentary" by Alex de Vries. (A commentary in the context of an academic journal means a short opinion piece that does not to go through a full peer-review process and which does not use novel empirical data). The method he used to claim that Bitcoin's environmental damage was a growing concern was his fundamentally flawed "energy use per transactions" method (Bitcoin energy use does not come from its transactions, therefore it can scale transaction volume exponentially without increasing emissions). de Vries' metric was later debunked in no fewer than 4 separate academic journals as part of full length academic papers. *Masanet et al 2019 researchgate.net/publication/33… *Dittmar et al. 2019 nature.com/articles/s4155… *Sedlmeir et al, 2020 link.springer.com/article/10.100… *Sai and Vraken 2023 #br0070" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">sciencedirect.com/science/articl… The entire body of de Vries' work was systematically debunked by Sai and Vranken in late 2023 source: #br0070" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Immediately after Sai & Vranken's study, all mainstream media outlets stopped covering de Vries' Bitcoin "research" In fact, 22 mainstream media outlets have now flipped to covering Bitcoin's environmental benefits (source: x.com/DSBatten/statu…) which have been well established in 24 peer reviewed full length academic studies. (source: lnkd.in/gdH4wvw7) A further 15 sustainability media outlets are now also covering Bitcoin mining's environmental benefits: source: lnkd.in/gdH4wvw7 But just as years after the myth "all fats cause cholesterol" was debunked, many people are still unaware of the science, the same is true of Bitcoin mining In both cases, the population was misinformed over many years. As a result, many people are still unaware that the contemporary academic literature, case studies and grid operators themselves all overwhelmingly support Bitcoin mining's environmental benefits source: x.com/DSBatten/statu… It is only a matter of time before policymakers, regulators, political leaders and investment committees catch up. Once they do we will see mainstream adoption of Bitcoin, and mainstream adoption of Bitcoin mining as part of climate action (aka: what the peer reviewed research tells us it is) source: x.com/compose/articl… While many media outlets are now objectively commenting on Bitcoin, others (Financial Times, The Economist, Verge, Wired, New Scientist) have simply pivoted to changing the type of Bitcoin misinformation they publish.