Crypto crash unlikely to reduce its climate impact, expert says

Crypto crash unlikely to reduce its climate impact, expert says

The crypto crash will not reduce the sector’s climate impact any time soon, an economist has warned, even though the environmental footprint of digital currencies is in theory set by their market value.

“Unless bitcoin collapses further, there’s no reason to expect a decrease in environmental impact,” said Alex de Vries, a data scientist at the Dutch central bank and the founder of Digiconomist, which tracks the sustainability of cryptocurrency projects.

His research shows that while the increase in a cryptocurrency’s price encourages more computer capacity to be dedicated to it – increasing carbon emissions – that capacity takes a long time to disappear after the value declines, so the climate impact persists.