In a surprise move yesterday, Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla will no longer be accepting bitcoin as payment for its cars. The announcement comes just two months after the Tesla CEO announced they would be starting the initiative.
Article by Patrick Carroll from FEE.
“We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” Musk said. “Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment.”
The current plan is for Tesla to hold on to its bitcoin balance until mining starts using more sustainable forms of energy. They are also looking into other cryptocurrencies that use less energy than bitcoin.
The debate around bitcoin’s energy usage has been going on for years now, and many are concerned that its current energy sources pose a serious threat to the environment. But in order to do a proper analysis of bitcoin’s impact, we need to weigh the pros and cons.
The cons are that it is potentially contributing to climate change and is certainly contributing to the depletion of nonrenewable resources, at least in the present. Those are valid concerns, and they ought to be researched in considerable depth.
But think about the pros. For the first time in human history, we have created a form of money that is impossible to debase, almost perfectly secure, and accessible to everyone with an internet connection. This is a major improvement over our current money, and it is paving the way for true economic freedom by taking the control of money away from central banks and giving it back to the free market.
It is hard to overstate how significant this is. The fact that governments control the money system has led to all sorts of corruption and waste, from wars to corporate bailouts to recessions. The possibility that we could disrupt and eventually end all that with this new technology is, in my books, of far greater consequence than the energy sources this technology happens to use.
So regardless of how we view the environmental concerns, let’s not lose hope in the promise of free market money simply on account of its imperfections.
YouTube, Spotify, and other Big Tech platforms are taking Freedom First Network down
It’s no secret we speak our minds and bring on guests who do the same. That’s one of the biggest reasons we put together the Freedom First Network in the first place. There are far too many news outlets, including so-called “conservative” media companies, who are so beholden to Big Tech that they temper their perspectives at best and outright coverup the truth at worst. Many, as you all know, will blatantly lie in order to maintain the narrative that supports the radical agenda taking over much of the United States.
We have had our YouTube channel taken down. Many of our shows have been suppressed or removed by Facebook and Twitter. Spotify banned one of our shows completely from their platform. Google hates us. We’ve even been censored by some of the smaller players like Medium, Transistor, and Captivate. But we stand behind our reporting and perspectives and we refuse to bow down to Big Tech tyranny for the sake of pageviews or video plays.
This isn’t the easiest road to travel, especially for a media company that is so new. We launched Freedom First Network in 2020 to fight against the very censorship that we’re seeing so widespread today. We have found great homes for our content on freer speech platforms like Rumble and we’re putting our best efforts forward into building our presence on Locals. Nevertheless, we cannot do it alone. We need help.
One of the things cofounders Jeff Dornik and JD Rucker agreed to from the start was to never be the pawns of companies that do not embrace our worldview. Finding advertisers and affiliates is easy; we receive requests by companies wanting to be pushed on our shows every day. But it’s important to us that we’re promoting companies, services, and products that are beneficial to maintaining a Freedom First stance in America. As a result, we do not take on sponsors easily. We would rather rely on our own products like Freedom First Coffee and the support of our wonderful viewers, listeners, and readers.
Those who want to support us and help keep the fight for America’s future moving forward can do so by donating through our Locals page. There, you can donate monthly or one-time. Some have told us to use Patreon or GoFundMe, but both of those platforms have demonstrated a hatred for free speech. Locals does not. They embrace it. We encourage everyone to join us on Locals, but donations are greatly appreciated as well. We do not have day jobs. Our fight for freedom is a full-time gig.
Please feel free to reach out to us through our contact form. It goes directly to our founders, so if you’re interested in getting involved, investing, sponsoring, or even bringing a show to our network, let us know. May God Bless the United States of America!
