{"id":14356,"date":"2024-06-14T17:34:23","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T14:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/greenpeace-criticizes-wall-streets-support-for-bitcoin\/"},"modified":"2024-06-14T17:34:23","modified_gmt":"2024-06-14T14:34:23","slug":"greenpeace-criticizes-wall-streets-support-for-bitcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/greenpeace-criticizes-wall-streets-support-for-bitcoin\/","title":{"rendered":"Greenpeace Criticizes Wall Street&#8217;s Support for Bitcoin"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-text-wrappers-keypoints article_keypoints\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Greenpeace released a report urging major Wall Street companies supporting Bitcoin to take responsibility for environmental pollution.<\/li>\n<li>The organization accused some financial players of hypocrisy and false &#8220;green&#8221; initiatives.<\/li>\n<li>Environmentalists compared the mining industry to the tobacco and fuel industries.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>Wall Street giants like BlackRock and Vanguard contribute to the environmental damage caused by the mining of the first cryptocurrency, according to the American branch of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/usa\/reports\/bankrolling-bitcoin-pollution\/\">Greenpeace<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The report, &#8220;Bankrolling Bitcoin Pollution: How Big Business is Financing a New Climate Threat,&#8221; states that companies must take responsibility for supporting an industry with high carbon emissions.<\/p>\n<p>According to the report&#8217;s authors, major players advocate for Bitcoin mining by creating economic incentives, thereby perpetuating the environmental threat.<\/p>\n<p>Among the most significant &#8220;pollution sponsors,&#8221; Greenpeace named Trinity Capital, Stone Ridge Holdings, BlackRock, Vanguard, and MassMutual. According to the report, in 2022, they accounted for over 1.7 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2<\/sub>), equivalent to the emissions of 335,000 American households.<\/p>\n<p>The organization believes that mining has become a serious commercial sector, requiring significant capital access for building facilities and purchasing equipment. Therefore, cryptocurrency mining firms rely on support from banks and asset managers, and Wall Street &#8220;heeds these calls.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;Banks and asset managers must disclose risks to shareholders and clients, who currently lack important information about the climate threat associated with Bitcoin,&#8221; noted the environmental activists.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Double Standards<\/h2>\n<p>The absence of environmental standards &#8220;allows mining companies to evade responsibility and conceal the scale of the climate problem,&#8221; Greenpeace claims.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The organization called it &#8220;hypocrisy&#8221; that banks prioritize environmental agendas but also invest in or finance the Bitcoin industry.<\/p>\n<p>Greenpeace emphasized that BlackRock is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.netzeroassetmanagers.org\/commitment\/\">participant<\/a> in the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, which includes a commitment to support net-zero emissions by 2050 in line with efforts to combat global warming.<\/p>\n<p>Environmentalists also accused Wall Street companies of financing a &#8220;new gold rush,&#8221; leading to the construction of numerous Bitcoin mining facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The report mentions a Riot Platforms facility in Texas. According to Greenpeace estimates, the enterprise produces the highest carbon dioxide emissions, accounting for about 526,000 tons of CO<sub>2<\/sub>.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Worse Than Cigarettes and Oil<\/h2>\n<p>The organization accused direct participants in the Bitcoin industry of false &#8220;green&#8221; claims regarding mining&#8217;s environmental impact. Greenpeace believes companies promote renewable energy sources but rarely use them in practice.<\/p>\n<p>The report&#8217;s authors compared the mining sector to &#8220;a combination of the tobacco and fuel industries.&#8221; They claim leading players in the segment publish &#8220;misleading studies in predatory scientific journals in an attempt to paint a green image.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Many articles claim that energy-intensive mining benefits the environment by stimulating the purchase of outdated renewable energy and providing grid stability. However, Greenpeace considers these ideas &#8220;speculative, contentious, or false.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Some miners artificially reduce their carbon footprint by purchasing renewable energy credits (REC). Thus, they report broader use of renewable energy sources and demonstrate low carbon dioxide emissions in documents.<\/p>\n<p>Environmental activists stated that REC tools are &#8220;notoriously unregulated&#8221; and often useless in the context of environmental protection.<\/p>\n<p>Greenpeace is convinced that regulation and taxation are necessary to &#8220;curb the enormous energy appetites&#8221; of Bitcoin miners. Therefore, the US needs policies that &#8220;make companies pay for the environmental, social, and economic costs of their activities,&#8221; the report says.<\/p>\n<p>The organization approved attempts by President Joe Biden&#8217;s administration to introduce a 30% tax on digital asset mining. Its representatives believe that the levies could &#8220;encourage miners to clean up their operations.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In March 2022, environmentalists initiated the &#8220;Change the Code, Not the Climate&#8221; campaign in collaboration with other groups and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen. Their main goal is to transition digital gold from the Proof-of-Work algorithm to Proof-of-Stake.<\/p>\n<p>In the spring of 2023, Greenpeace introduced a mascot symbolizing the &#8220;dangerous levels of pollution&#8221; caused by the mining of the first cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n<p>Later, the creator of the image, artist Benjamin Von Wong, stated that his work &#8220;was never intended to fight Bitcoin.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Back in January 2024, Greenpeace <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/greenpeace-criticizes-approval-of-bitcoin-etf-in-the-us\">criticized<\/a> the US Securities and Exchange Commission&#8217;s decision regarding spot Bitcoin ETFs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greenpeace released a report urging major Wall Street companies supporting Bitcoin to take responsibility for environmental pollution. The organization accused some financial players of hypocrisy and false &#8220;green&#8221; initiatives. Environmentalists compared the mining industry to the tobacco and fuel industries.\u00a0 Wall Street giants like BlackRock and Vanguard contribute to the environmental damage caused by the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1137,1259,1150],"class_list":["post-14356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-cryptocurrency-mining","tag-ecology","tag-news-plus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"14","promo_type":"","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}