New writing… Pleased to say I have another article published in The Sunday Times newspaper — exploring the rehabilitation of crypto as a potential force for good on climate action, featured as part of a special Raconteur report into the Future of Fintech.
In the early days, crypto earned a bad reputation for its carbon footprint, and rightly so. Energy demands and emissions associated with mining blockchain-based currencies were making the wrong kinds of headlines and fuelling the wrath of climate activists.
Now, as crypto begins to put its energy and emissions excess behind it, the editorial asks whether the tech can emerge from climate rehab as a change-agent for Net Zero, harnessing the positive power of blockchain and Web3?
The establishment seems to think so, judging by the positive signs from global institutions.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) just launched a new Crypto Sustainability Coalition to investigate the potential of Web3 technologies in fighting climate change.
Also, the World Bank has announced its backing for a carbon credit blockchain registry to attract crypto investors and direct the non-fungible token (NFT) craze towards projects that help cut emissions and improve transparency of carbon-offset markets.
In terms of demonstrating the provenance of data and assets more widely, markets are clearly seeing the benefits of blockchain for authenticating transactions, identities and sources — which is proving especially valuable with greenwashing a hot topic, at present.
When it comes to accelerating progress towards Net Zero and SDGs, though, fintech also has potential to be a powerful enabler of social-change programmes in ReFI (Regenerative Finance) and DeFi (Decentralised Finance).
So, with expert comment, evidence of the transition under way and examples of fintech innovators active in the climate space, the piece discusses The unlikely rehabilitation of crypto as a green force (uploaded as a full page PDF to view/download).
The full Future of Fintech report November 2022 is also available to view/download in full here.
Further Reading:
- Also on SustMeme, Web3 running app on path to carbon removal;
- Also on SustMeme, Carbon offset prices could jump 50-fold by 2050;
- Also on SustMeme, World’s first ‘entech’ net zero trailblazer launched in London;
- Also on SustMeme, Clean cryptocurrency: World’s first tradable carbon token.
- Check out SustMeme Climate & Energy Top 500 and SustMeme CSR & Business Top 500 global rankings; plus
- The full archive of stories on the SustMeme CSR & Business Channel;
- Also, upcoming long-form article series on SustMeme: From DeFi to ReFi — green money, or greenwash?
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