Relax, Bitcoin Isn't Killing the Planet

The cryptocurrency is spurring use of renewable energy even as it undermines existing economic, political, and cultural elites.

My latest video for Reason, produced by my colleagues Regan Taylor, Isaac Reese, and Jim Epstein, pushes back on the idea that bitcoin is bad for the environment.

From the article that provides links and details to what’s discussed in the video:

Such environmentalist attacks on bitcoin are best understood as a strategy by economic, media, and political elites to undermine a powerful new form of money that they can't control. Critics distort the basic facts about what's known as bitcoin "mining," the process through which a global network of computers maintain the bitcoin network through computation. Though energy intensive, this process is what makes bitcoin a truly decentralized monetary system. 

Go here to read the article version at reason.com.

Bitcoin doesn’t suffer from a lack of champions who routinely call it the greatest invention since the internet, the printing press, fire, you name it. I’m bullish on bitcoin not because it’s going to make early investors rich (though it will do that for some) but because it creates an alternative store of value and a decentralized system of finance and, ultimately, communication. You don’t need to be a crazy-eyed bitcoin maximalist or cryptonaut to recognize it is a big fucking deal (to paraphrase Joe Biden back in the day) that will—like the internet, the printing press, and, well, fire—vastly expand the ability of regular people to live their lives more on their own terms and to do things that authorities want to prohibit. In fact, it’s already doing that, especially in authoritarian regimes like Iran, Venezuela, and China.

I made that case in this week’s Reason Roundtable podcast, starting around the 32.55-minute mark. Click below to check that out.

And check out my interview from earlier this summer with Cynthia Lummis, the “Crypto Queen of the U.S. Senate.” She explains why she’s all in on bitcoin. It’s great stuff. Here’s a print version. Click below to watch or listen.

I’ve been writing about bitcoin and crypto since 2011. My interest really spiked around the trial of Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road website (see Reason’s coverage here). Here’s the first video I did about bitcoin for Reason, in June 2011. It’s an interview with Jerry Brito, then at the Mercatus Center and now the executive director of Coin Center.