Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is not a fan of cryptocurrency, especially Bitcoin. And it doesn’t even come close.
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MUMBAI, MAHARASHTRA MAY 21: VMware CEO Patrick P. Gelsinger clicked during a photo shoot in Mumbai.
According to The Register, Gelsinger recently raged against Bitcoin, going so far as to call it a “climate crisis,” citing how much of a power-guzzling beast cryptocurrency mining — and by extension, Bitcoin mining — really is.
Intel’s CEO mentioned how just a single Bitcoin ledger entry uses as much power as a normal home needs in one day. “That’s a climate crisis. That’s not okay,” he said in a recent interview with Bloomberg.
But while the head of Big Tech is never much of a fan of Bitcoin mining or any other energy-hungry cryptocurrency mining activity in general, that doesn’t mean Intel is completely abandoning crypto mining. In the same Bloomberg interview, he mentioned how the company is bringing a new, “dramatically better” blockchain chip that is poised to cope with the power-hungry nature of crypto mining.
Team Blue calls the blockchain chip the Bonanza Mine, which is reportedly a more efficient version of an ASIC miner. According to TheBlockCrypto, the chip is capable of about 40 terahash per second (TH/s) of computing power.
Compared to other ASIC mining hardware on the market, it lags significantly. Other more popular mainstream hardware is capable of 95 to as much as 112 TH/s, but Intel says the Bonanza Mine’s advantage is its power efficiency. Apparently, companies including Argo and Block have already placed orders for the new chip, according to the original TheBlockCrypto report.
Now Gelsinger’s harsh claims that Bitcoin is a “climate crisis” are not entirely false. If there is one thing you should know about mining Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, it is that they consume huge amounts of power. This is not a good thing at the moment as the governments of the world are doing their utmost to reduce their carbon footprint.
This has led to multiple crackdowns on cryptocurrency mining and trading in several major countries around the world.
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This photo, taken on April 1, 2021, shows a worker modifying cryptocurrency mining rigs at a cryptocurrency farm in Dujiangyan in China’s southwestern Sichuan province.
Also read: Crypto mining is a ‘threat’ to US power grid, credit rating agency says
Why is Intel CEO really not a big fan of crypto mining?
Gelsinger’s recent comments in the Bloomberg interview may seem out of place to some, but his feelings have remained largely the same for the past several years. He doesn’t seem to be a big fan of Bitcoin at all.
He made the same sentiment known long ago in a Fortune article from 2019 (via CoinTelegraph), while he was still the CEO of cloud computing provider VMware. The statement he made is almost identical to his most recent, in which he again mentioned how one Bitcoin ledger entry for a day uses as much power as that of an entire house.
(Photo: Getty Images)
Apart from that, he claimed that Bitcoin is mainly used for illegal activities, which is where his “bad for humanity” comment comes from. But as his business continues with the Bonanza mine, some may view these harsh claims as a contradiction.
Related: Cryptocurrency Is Like A Ponzi Scheme, Indian Reserve Bank Official Says
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Written by RJ Pierce
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