Pomp says bitcoiners shouldn’t apologise for using energy

Pompliano told CNBC in an interview that Bitcoin’s energy usage continues to become more and more efficient as it scales and as miners tap into more renewable energy sources.

Pomp Investments founder and popular Bitcoin podcaster Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano says that the conversation around Bitcoin’s energy use and how efficient that is, largely suffers from “two key points” that people tend to miss.

He said this during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, where he briefly highlighted the issues of Bitcoin’s volatility and energy use.

He told the shows’ host Joe Kernen that as people continue to debate Bitcoin’s energy consumption, they need to take note of the following:

Bitcoin becomes more energy efficient as it scales

According to him, the first one is the “linear relationship between energy consumption and the US dollar system.”  He goes on to explain why it is important for the conversation to take note of this point.

“In order to support more users and more transactions, we need to consume more energy. We need more data centers, more bank branches, more ATMs etc,” he added.

On the other hand, he explained, the Bitcoin blockchain doesn’t have the same kind of linear relationship seen between the fiat ecosystem and energy consumption. He noted that regardless of how many transactions get added to a block during transaction processing, the amount of energy consumed is the same.

“As it scales, Bitcoin becomes more and more efficient because you can pack more economic value into each of these blocks, whereas in a legacy system you need to consume more energy as you scale.”

“Important things in the world use energy”

Pomp also says that there’s nothing to apologise for when it comes to the issue of Bitcoin’s energy consumption. In his view, “important things in the world use energy”

He points to the growing use of renewable energy in Bitcoin mining, saying that the shift to all these newer greener sources of energy is driving research and development in the renewable energy industry.

Before delving into the energy usage question on the show, Pompliano had first talked about one important metric- Bitcoin’s volatility.

“The key piece is that the volatility is measured in dollars. If you think of the dollar itself, the dollar is hyper-volatile as well … 40% of all US dollars in circulation have been printed in the last 18-24 months.” says @APompliano. “One #bitcoin still equals one bitcoin.” pic.twitter.com/O5CwpEwGkB

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) December 27, 2021

He noted that BTC price had two 50%+ drawdowns in 2020 and has seen over six 20%+ corrections this year. There have also been notably huge price jumps, but he believes the best way to look at volatility is the value of the US dollar in which Bitcoin price movement is denominated.

If you think of it this way, he explains, you will find that indeed USD is also “hypervolatile.”