Among the fascinations with crypto currencies are that they are paperless, virtual and of course digital.
So one would think they are custom made for the sustainable built environment and the modern approaches to warding off climate change. But at least one expert says that doesn’t fly and that Miami officials, who have been banking on making the city a crypto capital, should know better.
“My opposition to crypto is based on its deleterious effects on the environment. The fact that Miami, considered “the most vulnerable major coastal city in the world,” would go all in for a currency created by a climate-wrecking technology always seemed to me to be a particular kind of madness,” writes Jake Cline on CNN.com
“Many people don’t understand how a currency that exists largely in the digital space can have real-life destructive impacts on our environment. Bitcoin mining uses vast amounts of resources. As the New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in an April 2021 article, “ ‘bitcoin-mining operations worldwide now use … about the annual electricity consumption of the entire nation of Sweden.’ ”
“It is entirely possible to mine bitcoin responsibly…While some bitcoin miners say they want their industry to go green, the majority resist calls to adopt the proof of stake system over fears it would eat into their profits. Meanwhile, residents of Miami seem torn on environmental matters. According to a survey conducted by Yale University, as well as George Mason University, they believe that local officials, and state officials, including the governor “should do more to address global warming.”
Miami-Dade County will once again play host later this year to Bitcoin 2023, the next installment of the annual conference.