The focus of the blockchain climate discussion is missing the point

On Oct 2, 2021

As the nonfungible tokens craze took off at the start of the year, many climate-conscious artists vocalized their disapproval of Ethereum’s energy consumption. In May, Elon Musk then derailed (BTC), citing the energy consumed by Bitcoin as cause for Tesla (NASDAQ:) to withdraw its plans to accept BTC as payment for its electric cars.

Both of these events have provoked a surge of debate from inside and outside the blockchain community. In particular, the arguments tend to focus on two areas: Bitcoin’s energy consumption and its dependency on climate-damaging fossil fuels versus renewables and, secondly, the benefits of one blockchain platform over another — generally focusing on consensus models and promoting proof-of-stake as the greener option.

Matt Hawkins (NASDAQ:) is founder and CEO of Cudo Ventures, a provider of global cloud computing and monetization software, and Cudos, a decentralized cloud computing network bridging the gap between the cloud and blockchain by recycling the world’s idle computing power. He previously founded C4L in 2000, which was acquired in 2016 and was one of the U.K.’s fastest data center ISPs, supporting around 1% of the U.K.’s internet infrastructure, and was winner of many fast-growth awards, including: The Sunday Times Tech Track 100, Deloitte’s U.K. Technology Fast 50 and Technology Fast 500 EMEA, and many more.