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Perfect read for the start of the crypto winter!
Super happy that the updated and English Version of Sven Hilgers and my paper on the different development waves of digital currencies and the future of money is published and available for free on Freiheit.org.
In the updated version take the developments of the last couple of months into account and extended our policy recommendations in light of the Proposals discussed in the European Union. Hope you enjoy the read!
Auf Einladung der Freidrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit und Christoph Giesa durfte ich im März über die Kryptonutzung Weltweit sprechen und mit einigen Urban Legends rund um das Thema Krypto aufräumen.
Ihr könnt das Gespräch kostenlos auf YouTube anschauen.
“The best way to be equipped to speak to, engage with and apply cryptocurrency to your life and your workplace is not to read about it, but rather to start working with it directly.”
Global Future Council on Cryptocurrencies
The Crypto-Council of the World Economic Forum was so kind creating a comprehensive, easy-to-read guide on the workings of Cryptocurrencies and how to get started using them. Highly recommended read for everyone!
You can download the 23-page long guide here.
A recent study found that today 67% of the energy used by the Members of the Bitcoin Mining Council is sustainable energy, higher than for any country and probably any industry worldwide.1 So, maybe bitcoin is not the climate killer some people deem it to be but actually helping the fight against climate change?
Yes, the bitcoin-Network consumes a lot of energy and no sane person would try to argue with that. The more relevant question is if the energy is used efficiently and creates benefit or value. The comparison to banks and their infrastructure would be accurate to judge on that since the bitcoin network provides a similar service and an honest assessment compares bitcoins carbon footprint with the services that are substituted. We only know how bad bitcoin is, if we know what the energy consumption of the traditional financial system is – or if you see bitcoin more like digital gold, how much energy is used to mine, store and distribute gold.
On the other hand, the energy used for bitcoin is exceptionally clean. The biggest cost position for Miner is electricity – they have an unprecedented incentive to buy the energy as cheap as possible and are insanely mobile at the same time. Clean energy is in most, if not all places, significantly cheaper than dirty coal and that’s why Miners mainly adapted innovative approaches like changing production venues each Season or buying otherwise wasted energy. This way the network today has a cleaner energy mix than Germany as one of the greenest countries in the world and will probably net-zero emitting by the mid of this decade. All without any subsidies or pressure from regulators. The help for climate doesn‘t come from the energy consumption, but the innovation around it.2,3
Having said all that: Besides bitcoin as digital gold, I strongly favor more environmentally friendly consensus-mechanism like Proof-of-Stake and more efficient blockchains like Cardano and hopefully soon Ethereum.
(1) https://www.hope.com/content/dam/hope-assets/collateral/BMC-Q2-2021-materials.pdf
(2) https://assets.ctfassets.net/2d5q1td6cyxq/5mRjc9X5LTXFFihIlTt7QK/e7bcba47217b60423a01a357e036105e/BCEI_White_Paper.pdf
PayPal announced the launch of the a new „Checkout with Crypto“ enabling its users to pay with cryptocurrencies they hold on PayPal accounts. This means that US consumers can use their cryptocurrencies to pay at millions of global online merchants and another big step for the normalized use of digital assets in day-to-day life. While the news are undoubtedly good for widespread adoption, they come with a grain of salt for merchants. Other the Tesla, which will keep the bitcoin used to buy its cars, PayPal will convert the digital assets at the Check-Out into fiat-money and pay the merchant in USD or EUR.