BitMEX Crypto Exchange Goes Carbon Neutral: Report

The BitMEX crypto exchange goes carbon neutral following the company’s commitment made earlier this year as we are reading more in our latest cryptocurrency news.

The BitMEX crypto exchange goes carbon neutral and the announcement came after the platform committed to achieving this goal earlier this year. The CEO Alexander Hoptner noted:

“Sustainability is the challenge of our time. Bitcoin—and cryptocurrency in general—is the transformative technology of our time. Especially around COP26, it’s only natural that crypto faces tough questions about the environmental impact of the technology that enables our work.”

My thoughts on sustainability in crypto, our responsibilities, and how BitMEX aspires to lead by example. https://t.co/eF1Jpm23yD

— Alexander Höptner (@AlexHoeptner) November 2, 2021

The exchange committed to carbon neutrality and started a carbon offsetting program that involved donating $0.0026 for every $1 of blockchain fees to the clients paid, as Hoptner noted:

“This is important because it allows us to mitigate the environmental impact of our current activity while we make more structural, long-lasting plans.”

But does carbon neutrality really work and what are the other plans for BitMex to improve its sustainability? Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin consume a huge amount of energy and the estimates from Cambridge University suggest that BTC would rank among the world’s leading countries by annual energy consumption. This translates to a huge carbon footprint as bitcoin already produces huge amounts of electrical waste because of the short life of the mining machines. Many companies around the world adopted a carbon neutral regime and hoped to address the issue of sustainability but carbon offsetting was criticized as a solution that does too little and too late.

One popular example of carbon offsetting is planting new trees. A newly planted tree can take up to 20 years to capture the amount of CO2 that the carbon-offset scheme promise so with that mathematics we would have to plant and protect a lot of trees for decades to offset a small chunk of global emissions according to Alia Al Ghussain for Greenpeace. BitMEX is aware of the shortfalls that are involved in this method as a spokesperson noted:

“We definitely understand the critics’ point of view on carbon offsetting and debated internally about to what extent we should focus our strategy on offsetting. Ultimately, we decided that even imperfect solutions to existential problems like climate change are worth pursuing.”

The exchange is also committed to being carbon neutral in the future and will aim to achieve this by mixing other carbon offsetting tools and solutions and to lessen crypto’s impact on the environment. The exchange didn’t provide more details about the solutions it aims to use in the future but Hoptner did say that the exchange could invest in education about crypto and work with organizations committed to decreasing the environmental impact.