Co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, recently appeared on an episode of Steve-O’s Wild Ride!, in which Steve-O, a leading actor in Jackass: The Movie, discussed Bitcoin and its impact on both the economy and environment.
“Bitcoin, it takes a lot of energy to mine and to keep all of these cyber currencies,” Wozniak said to Steve-O as the host of the show mentioned he had received some pushback from viewers of his show for selling non-fungible token, which some of his audience viewed as a waste of energy.
“It costs an amount of energy for what anything is worth,” Wozniak interjected. “The three E’s. The economy, equals the energy used, equals the emissions.”
“The global economy equals the energy used (if you double one, you double the other), and that equals the amount of pollution that we get. Double the energy, you double the pollution,” Wozniak said.
Wozniak redirected the conversation explaining that the concern for Bitcoin energy consumption is largely unfounded since everything has a cost and we, as a society, have to determine if the cost is justified. To dismiss Bitcoin for energy consumption is to ignore the fact that anything we have uses energy, as Wozniak explained to Steve-O.
When asked if humanity would continue to use fiat currency or if it was moving towards cryptocurrency by Steve-O’s co-host, Wozniak responded “it’s hard to erase things that humans have learned.”
Wozniak continued to explain that much of the use-cases arising today in the crypto space seem to be gearing towards scams. “I think it’s being used a lot these days to rip people off.”
Giving an example of what these scams can look like Wozniak said “I’ll start a crypto, I’ll hire an engineer that knows how to create it, and I’ll get a celebrity to back it up.” Using Kim Kardashian as an example, he said he’d make the Kim Coin. “And then the founders that started it pulled off some millions of dollars right away.”
He continued to explain that this is a common story, and sees many investors’ assets fall to zero due to a lack of diligence, or honesty from the founders. Wozniak continued to say “the amount of people that get ripped off in crypto and NFTs is just outrageous.”
Wozniak then separated Bitcoin from other cryptocurrencies by saying “Bitcoin is safe because it’s the big elephant on the block.”
Earlier in the podcast, Wozniak spoke on being offered one of these scenarios in which a company wants to create a cryptocurrency backed by a celebrity. “We’re gonna have a crypto coin on an exchange,” Wozniak said as he was impersonating the founders of EFFORCE – an electric efficiency company – “they ended up naming it Wozx.”
In 2020, Wozniak did an interview with Yahoo Finance where he commented on his involvement with Wozx. “I’ve been working in stealth with this group for a couple of years. I am in an engineering role, contributing to the blockchain thinking and accessibility of WOZX.”