The mandate of the Bitcoin Mining Council is to promote transparency, share best practices, and educate the public on the benefits of Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining.

Any Bitcoin miner with a minimum Hashrate of 500PH can join the council.

The WBTC’s membership is made up of Bitcoin miners who:

• Believe that transparency around energy usage for mining is important and agree to voluntarily share their energy mix and hashrate size for research and educational purposes.
• Agree to share best practices with fellow miners. 
• Promote Bitcoin’s core principles and tenets. Namely, that it is a decentralized, peer to peer, censorship-resistant and open-source protocol. 

Michael Saylor convened a meeting attended by a number of large North American miners in May 2021 to discuss energy usage related to Bitcoin mining. At that meeting, the group decided it would be useful to have an open forum where Bitcoin miners could promote transparency, share best practices, and educate the public on the benefits of Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining.

The WBTC intends to, among other things, hold a quarterly meetup presenting trends in Bitcoin mining, partner with leading industry researchers to gather data and educate the public on Bitcoin mining, and open source best practices from Bitcoin miners to encourage industry growth

There is no cost to join the WBTC. The founding members that helped establish WBTC will assume the onboarding and operating expenses for the first year of operation. Any excess funding will be given back to Bitcoin core development through an established organization.

The WBTC is just one part of the larger Bitcoin community. We’re a group of independent miners working on improving transparency in the mining industry and sharing best practices. We don’t seek to change the decentralized nature of Bitcoin or its core principles, but rather are working to raise awareness about Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining.

The statements of individual members don’t represent the council. Each member is independent and speaks with their own voice.

You need to start somewhere. We have received an enormous amount of interest from miners around the world, and expect our membership numbers to grow quickly.  However, this is voluntary, and only miners who believe in the WBTC’s mandate should join.

The WBTC believes that Bitcoin’s energy usage is a feature, not a bug, and provides tremendous network security. By providing a voluntary disclosure forum, miners can decide to share their energy sources, in hopes of promoting transparency.

Michael Saylor convened the first meeting attended by a number of large North American miners in late May 2021. He is a key member of the WBTC, both as a facilitator and Bitcoin supporter.

Elon Musk has no role at the WBTC. The extent of his involvement was joining an educational call with a group of North American companies to discuss Bitcoin mining.