NY Times Attacks Bitcoin With Piece Full Of Misinformation
The New York Times has once again published an inflammatory article about Bitcoin mining filled with misinformation. While leading Bitcoin researchers were quick to refute the information and data as biased and false, the article remains online in an effort to put BTC in a climate sinner’s corner.
One of Bitcoin’s leading environmentalists and researchers, Daniel Batten, separate the New York Times article and data to the core, revealing that the article lacks any journalistic integrity. As Batten discussed at length on Twitter, the mainstream publication only hand-picked the data that fit its “Bitcoin is bad” leitmotif.
Notably, this isn’t the first time the Bitcoin and crypto community has been furious with The New York Times. The publication was heavily criticized late last year for publishing a “breathless love letter” to Sam Bankman-Fried, even though his billion-dollar fraud had long since been exposed.
Bitcoin Activist Sets the Record
For experts in the Bitcoin mining industry, it is already obvious at first glance that the NY Times article is not to be trusted. The NY Times table of top BTC miners is grossly inaccurate, as reported by Batten, who collected actual data over an 8-month period.
According to Batten, the NY Times article exaggerates the emission levels of miners Riot, Atlas, Cipher Mining, US Bitcoin Corp, Rhodium and Bitdeer by an average of 81.7%. Furthermore, there is ample evidence that the NY Times has massively selected data to support its thesis.
For example, there are currently 26 mining companies in the US and Canada that use more than 90% sustainable energy. Of these, the NY Times included only two in its data (Cleanspark and Terawulf). Within those two, journalists focused on the sites that were less renewable energy-based and neglected those that were predominantly renewable.
“This is like cherry picking at the beginning: cherry picking within cherry picking,” said Batten, who goes on to say that the “article is full of such transgressions of genuine objective reporting.”
Furthermore, Batten accuses the publication of not saying any positive words about the “demand response program”, in which Bitcoin miners play an essential role for network operators, being able to limit their energy consumption in the short term. during network instabilities. Batten said:
The NY Times article attempts to create the impression that Bitcoin miners are costing citizens money by taking a share of the “demand response” revenue. By obscuring the context, its angle is designed to create moral outrage for something that is necessary for grid stability.
But that is not all. According to Batten, there are a total of nine pieces of evidence that reveal the bias of the alleged investigation. Among them is the fact that responsible people in the energy industry do not have an opinion. In the past, they have repeatedly recognized that BTC Mining promotes the expansion of renewable energy and stabilizes the grid.
GOVERNOR OF TEXAS: “#Bitcoin mining is good for the network.” pic.twitter.com/WgFQPg6Xtj
—Dennis Porter (@Dennis_Porter_) November 27, 2022
“No objective assessment of consumer and renewable operator benefit of setting a floor price for all variable renewables so that renewable operation can scale faster (as it has >4% per annum in ERCOT since 2021)”, Batten added.
Furthermore, there is also no objective reference to previous reports (including CNBC) on how BTC mining stabilized networks during winter storms. Data from network operators Lancium and ERCOT confirming this could not be found.
Likewise, no objective evidence can be found that BTC mining has a built-in economic incentive to be an uncompetitive consumer of electricity.
An executive at miner Riot Platforms echoed Batten’s criticism. Vice President Pierre Rochard hit back at the New York Times to clarify the misinformation about his company in the article.
According to the NY Times, Riot’s Rockdale, Texas mining operation uses roughly the same amount of electricity as the next 300,000 homes, “making it the highest electricity-consuming Bitcoin mining operation in America.”
Rochard asked the NY Times to release the methodology and simulation to reveal how the data was calculated.
The NYTimes didn’t bother fact-checking the first sentence of its #Bitcoin mining article.
They don’t care about your credibility, they just want to trick their readers into believing falsehoods. https://t.co/06lpNjRiGg
—Pierre Rochard (@BitcoinPierre) April 10, 2023
As Bitcoinist reported, Daniel Batten recently published new research stating that the main energy source of BTC mining is hydroelectric power, which accounts for 23% of the total energy. Fossil fuels have declined a total of 6.2% per year since January 2020. Overall, Bitcoin is the most sustainable industry in the world.
At press time, Bitcoin price was sitting at $28,282, still consolidating below the key resistance area at $28,600.
Featured Image from iStock, chart from TradingView.com