Key facts:
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Gemini Green purchased carbon permits for more than $ 4 million.
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The exchange partnered with the non-profit organization, Climate Vault.
The idea of offsetting Bitcoin’s energy consumption is gaining momentum among ecosystem companies. This time, brothers Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss through their bitcoin exchange, Gemini, have decided to help “decarbonize” the leading cryptocurrency.
To do this, they founded Gemini Green and partnered with Climate Vault, a non-profit organization, founded at the University of Chicago. Together, purchased carbon permits of almost 350,000 metric tons, in the order of USD 4,000,000, at the time of this writing.
In that sense, the company describes Gemini Green, as an initiative that plans to adopt “climate conscious practices” in the company, founded in 2014.
“We have a mission to empower the individual through cryptocurrencies, and we want to make sure we do it in a sustainable way,” they say. Gemini calculates its ‘use’ of the Bitcoin network as “the part of the mining process it benefits from, rather than adopting a transaction-based approach,” they highlight in another statement.
How are carbon emissions offset and eliminated?
According to the publication, Gemini’s new partner, Climate Vault, takes three steps to offset and eliminate carbon.
In the first of them, the organization, with the funding received, acquires regulated emission permits for America. In the second step, Climate Vault “saves” these permissions, preventing other market participants from use to emit carbon.
Ultimately the organization will use the monetary value of these permits to financing the actual removal of carbon from the atmosphere by companies that are implementing innovative carbon dioxide removal technologies.
For his part, Tyler Winklevoss, CEO of Gemini, indicated that the growth in the adoption of bitcoin as a store of value, leads them to incorporate “sustainability for future generations”.
“We are proud to partner with Climate Vault to offset our exposure to non-renewable mining and contribute to the decarbonization of bitcoin,” Winklevoss added.
Likewise, they announced that they allocated USD 1 million to support companies, projects and organizations non-profits that focus on sustainability in the Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency industry, through the Gemini Opportunity Fund.
More companies offset their emissions
As well as the Gemini exchange, the company Greenidge Generation it announced in May that, starting this month, it would 100% offset its CO2 emissions as a result of Bitcoin mining.
In that regard, CriptoNoticias reported that the company would purchase voluntary carbon offset credits of a portfolio of projects to reduce polluting gases.
Crypto mining-related companies have taken green steps, following statements by Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk, alleging that Bitcoin mining, supposedly, it is causing a “great cost” to the environment.
However, Crypto News reported that there are specialists who claim that the contamination of Bitcoin mining is inferior to that left by the traditional economic and financial system, specifically oil production.