NY Times attacks Bitcoin with pieces full of misinformation

by James · April 10, 2023

The New York Times has once again published a provocative article about Bitcoin mining full of misinformation. Although leading Bitcoin researchers were quick to refute the information and data as biased and false, the article remains online in an attempt to push BTC into the corner of a climate sinner.

One of the leading Bitcoin environmentalists and researchers, Daniel Batten, has picked apart The New York Times piece and data to the core, revealing that the article lacks journalistic integrity. As Batten discussed at length on Twitter, the mainstream publication only cherry-picked the data that fits the “Bitcoin is bad” leitmotif.

Remarkably, this is not the first time the Bitcoin and crypto community has been outraged by 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 been exposed.

Bitcoin activist sets the record straight

For insiders in the Bitcoin mining industry, it is already obvious at first glance that the NY Times article cannot 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 overstates the emission levels of mining companies 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 cherry-picked data massively to support its thesis.

For example, today there are 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 these two, the journalists focused on the least renewable energy-based sites and neglected those that are mainly renewable.

“This is incipient cherry-picking: cherry-picking within cherry-picking,” said Batten, who goes on to say that “the article is full of such violations of true objective reporting.”

Furthermore, Batten accuses the publication of not saying anything positive about the “demand response program”, in which Bitcoin miners play an important role for network operators by being able to throttle power consumption at short notice during unstable networks. Batten says:

The NY Times article attempts to create the impression that Bitcoin miners are costing citizens money by taking a cut of “demand response” revenue. By withholding context, their angle is designed to create moral outrage for something necessary to ensure stability.

But that’s not all. According to Batten, there are a total of nine signs that reveal the bias in the alleged investigation. Among them is that responsible people from the energy industry do not speak their mind. In the past, they have repeatedly acknowledged that BTC Mining promotes the expansion of renewable energy and stabilizes the grid.

TEXAS GOVERNOR: “#Bitcoin mining is good for the web.” pic.twitter.com/WgFQPg6Xtj

— Dennis Porter (@Dennis_Porter_) 27 November 2022

“No objective assessment of the consumer benefit and renewable operator benefit of establishing a price floor for all variable renewable energy so that renewable operation can scale faster (as it has been at >4% per year in ERCOT since 2021),” Batten added.

Also, there is also no objective reference to previous reports (including CNBC) about how BTC mining stabilized the network during winter storms. Data from Lancium and ERCOT network operators confirming this is nowhere to be found.

Likewise, there can be no objective evidence that BTC mining has a built-in economic incentive to be a non-competitive consumer of electricity.

An executive at mining company Riot Platforms echoed Batten’s criticism. Vice President Pierre Rochard hit back at the New York Times for listing misinformation about his company in the article.

According to the NY Times, Riot’s mining operation in Rockdale, Texas, uses about the same amount of electricity as the next 300,000 homes, “making it the most electricity-intensive Bitcoin mining operation in America.”

Rochard asked the NY Times to reveal the methodology and the simulation to reveal how the data was calculated.

The NYTimes couldn’t be bothered to fact-check the first sentence of theirs #Bitcoin mining article.

They don’t care about their credibility, they just want to trick their readers into believing falsehoods.

— Pierre Rochard (@BitcoinPierre) 10 April 2023

As Bitcoinist reported, Daniel Batten recently published new research stating that the main energy source for BTC mining is hydropower, which accounts for 23% of the total energy. Fossil fuels have declined by a total of 6.2% per year since January 2020. Overall, Bitcoin is the most sustainable industry in the world.

At press time, the Bitcoin price stood at $28,282, continuing consolidation below the key resistance area of $28,600.