How ETH and BTC Can Collaborate for a Renewable Energy Future

Transcript

[Music] [Music] good morning ECC bonjour Perry first talk of the day I better bring some energy and wake everybody up my name is Brad Van Voorhees I'm the co-founder of sustainable Bitcoin protocol before I kick this off I just want to give a big shout out to the organizers and the sponsors for putting together such an amazing event you know what's amazing is that this is a non-profit

event Frankly Speaking I think that most other crypto event holders don't even know what a non-profit is so kudos to ECC for such an incredible event you know I'm going to talk a bit about oddly enough Bitcoin and also eth of course um you know I think that uh sometimes I find myself in a strange Place Building sustainability for Bitcoin when Frankly Speaking a lot of bitcoiners are not really into sustainability and meanwhile a lot of climate activists and ngos that I want to engage with are extremely skeptical of Bitcoin and not just Bitcoin but also crypto in general

so I find myself in this weird place but I'm super excited to be here with all of you at ECC I know that you all have a really open mind can see the benefit of all that we're doing you know Bitcoin has this culture that's been around for quite some time and it's increasingly gotten more and more sort of pungent and strong this laser eye pleb culture and you know these this culture is they they sort of disdain change and progressivism and I think they're afraid to adapt but I don't want to dwell on that because

what I want to mention is that Bitcoin is changing and it's changing for the better in fact it's starting to become fun again and it's innovating again and we're actually taking inspiration from the eth community you guys may have even seen that yoga Labs came out with an ordinals collection not so long ago so you know these two cultures are starting to come together and frankly speaking I think it's for the best now I found this to be a little bit ironic that on the ECC website we've got the founder of ethereum vitalik and right next to him on the speaker's page

was sustainable Bitcoin protocol I just had to share that is a little bit ironic um I think it's fantastic and Frankly Speaking I think it sort of speaks to the stars are aligning for the crypto sector but at the same time this is reality and this reality I was making this presentation to share with you all and there was flooding in the U.S in the state of Vermont and in fact this flooding was in a specific town called Ludlow Vermont which is where I lived when I first dropped out of University and so this really struck home to me

that there was this flooding in a place that I care about so much climate change is real it is happening now we are having the hottest consecutive days in history across Europe today fortunately the weather here in Paris is amazing right now but uh climate change is real and at the same time despite having all of these Brilliant Minds in technology and in crypto specifically we have this odd degree of tribalism and you know I think that this tribalism frankly it's almost as bad as the

politicians and the big business who got us to this climate disaster in the first place now on the bottom left you see Zuck here in uh fight mode for his fight with Elon this has almost nothing to do with crypto but the photo was just too good not to include in this presentation about tribalism and fighting each other so here we are ECC Paris 2023 if BTC come together let's do something for the greater good of this world now whether you like it or not

whether governments like it or not proof of work is here to stay this is just fact the most powerful countries in the world can attempt to ban proof of work mining and it will migrate elsewhere just like we saw in middle of 2021 when the China mining ban happened proof of work is not going anywhere this is just fact as it pertains to bitcoin so the question then is how can we incentivize the use of clean energy in Bitcoin mining well I think as all of you guys know the way to drive change whether that's change in an individual or sectoral

change is through incentives we need to have incentives and so at sustainable Bitcoin protocol that is specifically what we are doing we are building incentives for Bitcoin miners to use verified transparent clean energy sources in mining and we are building that incentive on eth and so when you start to have that transparent use of clean energy all of a sudden you can actually Leverage proof of work for good in a proof of work mining as an energy consumer is a very unique energy

consumer and in fact it has the ability to help Drive the clean energy transition in many ways happy to talk about all of those ways with anyone in this room at a later date but let me give you just one example and that is using waste gas that's currently being flared burned thrown away destroyed and using that waste gas to power CO2 e mitigating Bitcoin mines now let me give you a really interesting fact there is enough of this flared gas around the world you guys have probably seen in video clips

these flares burning out in the desert there's enough flared gas around the world on an annual basis to power two-thirds of all of Europe's energy needs two-thirds and meanwhile we are having an energy crisis so leveraging this waste gas using it to power Bitcoin mines is an incredible way to actually reduce CO2 equivalence and Inspire other data centers to do similar processes that are helping to mitigate CO2 now the question probably is well why is that so important

for those that don't know methane is arguably our number one lever we can pull to help slow climate change in the immediate term because methane is 85 times worse for climate change than CO2 over a 20-year time Horizon so the more methane that we can mitigate from escaping into the atmosphere by combusting it and turning it into CO2 the more time we buy us to solve this crisis and Bitcoin mining is helping lead the way foreign the question always comes up then how do you actually verify the use of clean energy in Bitcoin mining and there's a lot of debate around it

and you know the closed-minded folks that uh are in the sector perhaps are saying it's impossible but actually it's not impossible at all we can do the exact same thing as literally every major corporation on planet Earth does which is leverage existing Frameworks like renewable energy 100 and the greenhouse gas protocol which are guidelines and Frameworks for driving or procuring renewable energy and these Frameworks are used by everyone you see on this slide plus many many more from Goldman Sachs to Google to Apple

so this is nothing new we just need to apply these Frameworks to our own sector in proof of work mining now we need to measure the energy consumption relative to energy procurement and you know interestingly um just like Bitcoin electrons are actually fully fungible and what that means is that when you have two different energy generators on the top you see a traditional generation like a coal powered uh coal Coal Power Plant and on the bottom you have a renewable generator as soon as those electrons enter the

grid they instantaneously co-mingle and they're now indistinguishable from each other and so the end buyer of that energy whether it's Google or meta or this building that we're sitting here in Paris they buy the energy that is uh the the mix of energy that is coming into the building and so in if the building or the business wants to specify the use of Renewables they use this instrument called a renewable energy certificate and or an EAC an energy attribute certificate which is effectively a financial instrument to allow them to procure Renewables and support and drive a premium to

renewable generators and so like I said Bitcoin is also fully fungible and as soon as those Bitcoin you know enter the marketplace they too are nearly indistinguishable from one another and so we can create a similar process and a similar incentive and so at spp we actually verify the use of clean energy at the Bitcoin mining level right down to the facility level we then issue an SBC on eth which the miner can then sell independent of that Bitcoin to an institution or an investor who wishes to own Bitcoin in a verifiably sustainable way and in effect what we're doing is driving a premium to

bitcoin miners using clean energy but the Bitcoin network but Bitcoin is a network right and so the question is well what about the historical impacts what about the existing 19 million Bitcoin what we do here is we create additional SBC through buying these energy attributes packaging them up and putting them into sbcs and so to produce these only two ways can they be produced either through sustainable Bitcoin mining practices or through financing of clean energy development these are the only two ways there's no team allocations nothing like this and this allows us to be squarely a new environmental commodity that is

specific to bitcoin now when we package those sbcs or those racks into us into sustainable Bitcoin certificates we use the Bitcoin Network's current energy consumption not the historical today the network is using around 450 megawatt hours to mine a single Bitcoin pushing nearly 500. and the first 10 million Bitcoin that were mined from the Genesis block to late 2013. on average they use around 50 kilowatt hours so when we make an SBC using today's energy consumption we are actually over compensating for the past

by around 10 000 times so now as the Bitcoin Network uses more and more energy and we package more and more wrecks into sbcs we've actually created a flywheel the more energy the Bitcoin Network uses the more powerful this protocol becomes to drive renewable energy development so now digital assets they can really drive the clean energy transition and for the first time investors can own Bitcoin in a verifiably sustainable way because of the support of an asset an environmental commodity built on eth and

the institutions they are coming that's fact so if we work together across all these different Technologies we can have a really lasting impact now there's this quote here that was in massari's state of Bitcoin report from last year that really stuck out to me and this was you know sort of at the depth of the bear market last year and they said with how unpredictable Bitcoin can be it's possible that the next cycle could be driven by The Narrative of Bitcoin as an ESG asset actually I want to change that quote just a little bit and say with how unpredictable crypto is it's possible that the next cycle could

be driven by the narrative that crypto is driving the clean energy transition both Bitcoin and eth together so I'm so excited to be here on the stage with you all sharing a little bit about what we're building our using eth to help Bitcoin become a climate positive asset thanks so much for having me today for those that enjoyed this I would love to connect with you outside of uh of the conference here feel free to whip out your phones you're probably already on them now anyway get out your Twitter

LinkedIn whatever it is you use threads follow us at sustainable BTC thanks so much for having me and uh enjoy the rest of this Wednesday [Applause] [Music]