This is a short interview where Kevin talks about the sustainability of bitcoin. There are a few things that he says big institutions consider about investing in bitcoin. (video below)
- Where did the coins come from
- Where they mined using green energy
Where did the bitcoin come from
For this point, they are basically saying that they want to only buy bitcoin from a verifiable source with some proof or at least a high level of trust that the coins were not mined in a place that does not have a good record of treating people good. This meaning that they don’t want to buy coins that were mined in a warehouse that has people working 12 hour shifts 7 days a week for $5 a week.
This seems to make sense and I think its a good push in the right direction. However, it would seem that anyone accepting payment in bitcoin is not going to be looking at the origin of the coin before making the sale.
With that said, I suppose it makes a lot of sense that a large company should not be buying $1 billion worth of bitcoin when seller did not obtain the coins in a good manner. Eg. They could be stolen or purchased from a mining farm that uses electricity made by burning “dirty” coal.
2. For this point, on a vary basic level large institutions would rather buy bitcoin that was mined in say Iceland (due to cooler weather, less energy used to mine) and that the electricity used to mine the bitcoin came from a “green” source like wind turbines. This seems to be a thing that big companies consider and well done on them.
With all that said, it seems that there is still going to be a solid market for bitcoin mined with dirty energy. I can not see some country that burns dirty coal banning the use of bitcoin miners, so it seems they will be on the market (just maybe not for big companies) for a long time.
As far as the clean electricity part goes, the other part of it is there is a new mining process call Proof of Storage which uses a lot less electricity then mining bitcoin. You might want to check it out, its called Chia.