Greenpeace war on Bitcoin unintentionally spawns 'badass' new mascot

Environmental group Greenpeace’s latest salvo against Bitcoin (BTC) has seen the commissioning of an artwork aimed at highlighting its climate impact. Instead, the art piece has been widely praised by Bitcoiners, who want to adopt it as its mascot.

On March 23, the climate activism group partnered with art activist Benjamin Von Wong for its ongoing “change the code, not the climate” campaign that seeks to convert Bitcoin’s consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake (PoS) model.

Greenpeace revealed its art piece dubbed the “Skull of Satoshi” — an 11 feet (3.3 meters) tall skull featuring the Bitcoin logo and red laser eyes, a popular meme adopted by Bitcoin supporters.

“Smoking stacks” sit atop the skull, which is made of recycled electronic waste, supposedly to represent the “fossil fuel and coal pollution” caused by Bitcoin mining and the “millions of computers” used to validate network transactions.

Greenpeace’s marketing efforts took an unexpected turn when Bitcoin supporters expressed admiration for the art piece, with some already adopting it as a quasi-mascot.

Will Foxley, the media strategy director at crypto miner Compass Mining, called the art piece “badass” and changed his Twitter profile picture to an image of the Skull of Satoshi.

Coin Metrics co-founder Nic Carter tweeted on March 24 that the art is the “most metal Bitcoin artwork to date.”

Related: Eager to work: Bitcoin switch to proof-of-stake remains unlikely

Others, meanwhile, picked apart the imagery Greenpeace chose, with one Twitter user saying the smokestacks on the skulls head resembled nuclear-cooling towers, which emit steam.

Greenpeace’s campaign was launched around a year ago alongside other climate groups and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen.

It aims to pressure key Bitcoin developers, miners and the government and claims 30 “key” entities could move Bitcoin from proof-of-work if they agreed to the change.

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