Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) often makes financial headlines for its wild price swings.
Sometimes for leaping higher. Sometimes for plummeting lower.
But investors – and your faithful media – are also increasingly taking note of the massive amount of energy soaked up by Bitcoin miners.
By some estimates, the vast amounts of computing power required to run the blockchain networks that enable the crypto's transactions as well as mine new tokens, already uses as much energy as all of the Netherlands.
And the world's biggest crypto by market cap could soon surpass the energy use of all of Australia.
With the world increasingly focused on decarbonising, you can see how this could pose an image problem.
Enter 'green Bitcoin'.
Image source: Getty Images
Renewables to the rescue
While the overall energy use required to run the blockchain networks isn't likely to fall anytime soon, the source of that energy is increasingly carbon neutral.
And that, according to Dan Roberts, CEO of Iris Energy Ltd (NASDAQ: IREN), is seeing more corporates and "semi-government institutions" express an interest in investing in sustainably mined Bitcoin.
According to Roberts (quoted by The Age):
It's something that will take three to six months to play out. But specific things are being worked on with specific organisations and semi-government corporates who are now quite interested in procuring green sustainable bitcoin directly from a miner.
Iris runs its crypto mining operation out of Canada solely off renewable energy.
Roberts said that the greening of the token is helping stoke institutional investor interest. But he noted it's already proven to be an attractive investment, even with its currently significant carbon footprint:
Bitcoin is selling itself with its scarcity attributes and the central banks are selling it on its behalf by continuing to debase the currency. The whole renewables side of that is just the next overlay for investors to think, 'What are the stakeholders? Are we being socially responsible? What's the right way to go about a transition to a different asset class?'
Bitcoin price slide no huge concern
As far as the performance of Iris, Roberts said the fall in the token's price since November's all-time highs isn't a big concern.
According to Roberts (quoted by The Age):
On a day-to-day basis … it's zero effect. We believe in bitcoin. We're building 30-year infrastructure, we control our own destiny. Bitcoin is volatile, but it's volatility within an asset that's been going up 10x every two years on average.
