Ep. 179 XRP Ecoterrorists
On this episode of the Unhashed Podcast, the gang talks Microstrategy smashing the buy button, the upcoming Bitcoin ESG fork, whether or not the Maldives will continue to exist, experiences vs accomplishments, and much more.
MicroStrategy, the data analytics firm helmed by billionaire cryptocurrency bull Michael Saylor, announced Tuesday one of its subsidiaries has taken on a $205 million loan to buy more bitcoin and is using the cryptocurrency as collateral, again doubling down on its unprecedented commitment to the world's largest cryptocurrency as the nascent market stages a turnaround. In a Monday morning regulatory filing, MicroStrategy disclosed its wholly owned subsidiary MacroStrategy entered into agreement with crypto-focused lender Silvergate Bank on Wednesday to take on a $204.7 million loan, net of closing fees and expenses, that it plans to use to buy bitcoin, pay loan expenses or for general corporate purposes. The three-year loan was collateralized with about $820 million in bitcoin, representing about 12% of MicroStrategy's overall cryptocurrency holdings; deal terms require at least $410 million worth of bitcoin to be held in collateral, assuming the full principal of $205 million remains. In a statement, Saylor said the loan gives MicroStrategy an opportunity to ""further [its] position"" as the public company with the largest bitcoin investment and said using the cryptocurrency as collateral on the loan, a first for the company, would allow it to further execute against its bitcoin strategy.
Michael Brune helped shutdown hundreds of fossil fuel-fired power plants as executive director of the Sierra Club. Then last year, as he was preparing to leave the environmental group after a decade at the helm, he started noticing a troubling trend: Some coal and gas plants were being revived or repurposed to power cryptocurrency mining. Now Brune has a new battle: to clean up bitcoin — the world’s dirtiest cryptocurrency. “This is increasing carbon pollution at a time when we need to be racing to decarbonize the entire economy,” Brune said in an interview with E&E News about the campaign launching today. “It’s bonkers that this is actually happening.” $5 million effort to change the code underlying bitcoin is a collaboration between the Environmental Working Group, Greenpeace USA and local environmental groups concerned about the impacts of bitcoin mining, an energy-intensive process in which powerful computers race to solve complex puzzles in hopes of winning a new bitcoin. The process now consumes more energy annually than the country of Norway, according to the University of Cambridge. The campaign’s initial funding is from the foundation of Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple Lab Inc., a privately held crypto company. Federal regulators have accused Larsen and Ripple of raising over $1.3 billion in unregistered securities offerings via Ripple’s XRP cryptocurrency. EWG, Greenpeace and the other environmental groups plan to use advertising and other advocacy efforts to pressure high-profile bitcoin backers like Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc., to support a code change that would lead to less energy use. The effort, which Brune is facilitating, will also explore legal and regulatory efforts. The goal of Brune and his collaborators is to switch bitcoin from a proof-of-work system, in which transactions are verified via computers competing to answer increasingly harder math problems, to one in which investors are randomly selected to do the bitcoin-generating work of verification. It’s a less energy-intensive process known as proof of stake.
https://twitter.com/BitMEXResearch/status/1507340794935627776