Beijing-based Bitmain has partnered with a United States-based sustainable Bitcoin miner, Merkle Standard, contributing capital investment, expertise and parts. As part of the joint venture, Bitmain will contribute to the development of up to 500 MW of clean digital mining infrastructure at Merkle Standard's hydro-powered facilities in Eastern Washington. Bitmain is a household name in the Bitcoin ecosystem, famed for the Antminer brand, the name behind popular Bitcoin ASIC miners the S9 and S19. Merkle Standard claims to be a carbon-conscious BTC miner, keen to become net carbon negative by year-end. Merkle Standard will install up to 150,000 Bitmain mining …

It was only a matter of time before China slapped a ban on Bitcoin (BTC) mining, trading and crypto services. To do anything with Bitcoin anywhere in the People’s Republic, one needs a special exemption. The Chinese government’s given reason for the Bitcoin crackdown is to reduce its well-documented climate impact. Regardless of the amount of truth in this explanation, one thing is clear: China’s righteous anger toward electricity-guzzling and carbon-spewing mined cryptocurrencies in the service of Earth’s climate is only the first shot in an impending global showdown over Bitcoin and other crypto projects that rely on proof-of-work (PoW), …

Nonfungible tokens (NFT) may be disrupting the trillion-dollar fashion industry, but NFTs are just one piece of a much larger puzzle that is revolutionizing this sector. Rather, blockchain technology as a whole continues to be a game-changer for the fashion industry. While blockchain-based supply chains served as some of the earliest use cases of how the technology could help detect fraudulent items, digital wearables being built on blockchain networks are now coming to play. Megan Kaspar, co-founder and managing director of Magnetic — a privately held crypto and blockchain investment and incubation firm — told Cointelegraph that digital fashion is …

Samsung Electronics America announced Monday at the CES tech conference in Las Vegas its partnership with veritree, a blockchain-based climate solutions platform, to plant 2 million mangrove trees in Madagascar over the next three months. Veritree uses blockchain technology to manage the reforestation process and verify each tree that is planted. The tree-planting initiative is part of Samsung’s nature-based action plan on environmental sustainability, specifically to capture and sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. The goal is to restore roughly 200 hectares of land and sequester roughly 1 billion pounds of CO2 over a 25-year period. Veritree, developed by …

Billion-dollar companies across the globe are betting big on Bitcoin (BTC). Recent analysis from European investment manager Nickel Digital Asset Management found that 20 publically listed companies with a market capitalization of over $1 trillion have about $9.6 billion invested in BTC. Individual investors are also taking an increasing interest in the asset. The “Third Annual Bitcoin Investor Study” from Grayscale Research found that demand for Bitcoin has risen tremendously. According to the study, 55% of current Bitcoin investors began buying the asset over just the last 12 months. Grayscale’s report also notes that the market for those interested in …

Bitcoin (BTC) is often used to criticize all blockchain-based projects. This is understandable since Bitcoin was the first project to use a blockchain, is arguably the most recognizable and is the largest cryptocurrency by market cap. In the first half of this article, I will use Bitcoin as a proxy for all blockchain-based projects because most people associate blockchain with Bitcoin. Anything environmentally positive that can be said about Bitcoin will be doubly true for the vast majority of newer blockchain-based projects since Bitcoin uses the oldest version of blockchain technology. Blockchain energy consumption Bitcoin has been attacked for high …

2021 has been a breakout year for the cryptocurrency market and aside from Bitcoin price soaring to new highs, the emergence of a vast decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem and the rising popularity of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) has thrust blockchain technology into the mainstream in a way that looks guaranteed to ensure mass adoption. One project that has benefited from its focus on NFTs and the ongoing green revolution is Tezos (XTZ), a layer-one smart contract protocol that is capable of evolving its network without needing to undergo a hard fork. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after …

In her monthly Expert Take column, Selva Ozelli, an international tax attorney and CPA, covers the intersection between emerging technologies and sustainability, and provides the latest developments around taxes, AML/CFT regulations and legal issues affecting crypto and blockchain. The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), where I exhibited my art, took place in Glasgow, Scotland and ended with the adoption of the Glasgow Climate Pact, bringing nearly 200 countries closer to keeping global temperature rise by 2100 under 1.5 degrees Celsius. The conference remained more focused on emission reductions than on developed countries’ provisions of support to developing countries, …

The COVID-19 pandemic badly affected businesses, societies and everything that is close to people’s lives. Lockdowns, travel restrictions and economic downturns have created many socio-economic problems such as higher unemployment rates, bankruptcy of small businesses and more. These problems are destabilizing for society, and it resulted in many people questioning, “how can we move forward in the best way possible?” while sustainability has become the buzzword. Encouraging sustainable practices is not new. The Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) framework has been rolled out for years as a metric to measure firms’ sustainability. With the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in increased …

Cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX has become one of the first exchanges in the sector to announce their carbon-neutral status, as well as vowing to offset emissions of all Bitcoin transactions to and from the platform. In a candid statement, the company expressed its intention to go further than merely balancing its emission output, citing a recent purchase of 7,110 tonnes of CO2 credits, approximately valued at $100,000, in partnership with AI carbon data tracking firm Pachama. Carbon credits are certifications of approval granted by official legislative bodies to permit corporations to use one tonne of carbon dioxide in an approach that …

The AFR’s list contains 87 of Australia’s richest entrepreneurs aged 40 and under, with each boasting a net worth greater than AUD 36 million ($26.9 million). The list is topped by Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, the co-founder and chief operating officer (COO) of popular graphic design software providers Canva. The married couple has an estimated net worth of AUD 16.5 ($12.3) billion between them. Seven crypto luminaires have debuted on the Australian Financial Review’s (AFR) “Young Rich” list of 2021, including the minds behind some of the leading protocols in the decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) sectors. …

Immersive cooling technology may help with the transition to zero-emission Bitcoin mining Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC) member Hass McCook told Cointelegraph. McCook, known online as Friar Hass, believes the industry is on track to hit the goal by 2030. Immersive cooling involves submerging Bitcoin mining ASICs into a specialized cooling fluid, which absorbs and recycles heat from the data center. This method of Bitcoin mining increases productivity. Earlier this month, Bitcoin mining company Riot Blockchain announced that it will be developing 200 megawatts of immersion-cooled Bitcoin mining infrastructure at its Whinstone Facility. Based on the company’s preliminary immersion-cooling test results, …