Bitso, a Mexico City-based exchange, is buying carbon offsets for every transaction it makes on its platform. It may sound great in theory, but the idea deserves a lot of skepticism, given the reputation carbon offset efforts have earned over the years.
According to Cambridge University, the thirst for power has grown many times over, recently topping the electricity usage of several countries. Bitso can't stop the emissions from entering the Earth's atmosphere because most of the energy comes from burning fossil fuels.
It could ban energy-intensive token completely. That won't happen. Bitso is working with Moss.Earth, a São Paulo, Brazil-based carbon offsets company, to indirectly mitigate the emissions associated with transacting bitcoin and ethereum-based token via its platform. The exchange plans to buy credits from projects in the Amazon Forest.
Bitso will eat the cost by buying MCO2 token from Moss. Moss will use the money to fund projects that preserve forests and fund sustainable agriculture. Vera, a nonprofit that sets standards for carbon credits, certified the company. Vera sharply criticized the report after it was found that his methodologies were not currently robust enough.
Bitso will purchase 0.0294 MCO2 token for market price, which is equivalent to 29.4 kilogram of CO 2 emissions, if each transaction on its platform is estimated. There are a wide range of estimates that try to pin down the exact emissions of a single transaction, and some are far greater than Moss and Bitso. The platform is working toward a less thirsty proof-of-stake system, but MCO2 is an ERC20 token and has its own emissions. Well done!
Bitso is the most popular and largest platform of its kind in Latin America with more than 4 million users. Bitso was ranked 67th on the list of top exchanges by Coin MarketCap, reflecting the limited scope of the deal.
Moss hopes that other projects within the space will follow suit to offset their carbon footprint.
Will it work? The carbon credit industry is expected to balloon in size in the coming years, but efforts to live up to their potential get a lot of flak. Carbon offsetting plans are essentially PR plans and companies need to stop carbon emissions from getting into the atmosphere in the first place, according to a report by the environmental group.
According to an email from a ZFC rich PhD researcher, it's possible to offset emissions from cryptocurrencies.
Bitso calls this a first step towards a larger strategy to address the environmental impacts of the industry. The company claims to work with the mostReputable Environmental Projects, and it offers some details on how they operate via its website. Trusting Moss requires some faith in Vera as well as carbon credits. When it comes to carbon credits, there is skepticism.
Saving and planting trees are both wildly popular ideas, but many environmental and advocacy groups have criticized politicians and corporations for arboreal fixation.
Happy Earth Day!
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