Topic: cryptocurrencies and carbon markets (Read 155 times)

Climatecoin has just launched its first ICO for a crypto currency:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171201005338/en/Climatecoin-Crypto-Carbon-Revolution
While others have already attempted to link crypto currencies to climate and environment, Climatecoin is a real revolution in the field. Being the only digital currency to be accepted as a payment in Carbon Trade Exchange Global, Climatecoin represents a unique opportunity both for those stakeholders interested in blockchain-based currencies and for those operating in carbon markets.
As for the first ones, Climatecoin represents an opportunity to overcome one of the most common fears related to digital currencies potential ‘bubbles’ due to their traditional lack of backing from central banks and of links to valuable commodities. By linking its crypto currency to the production of carbon mitigating actions, Climatecoin grants for each of its units to represent an actual value of a carbon mitigation, expressed in tonnes of carbon dioxide. As described in my most recent book, such an expression has the potential to become a commodity whose value is meant to significantly increase over time. Confidence on such potential has significantly grown over the last years, as a consequence of the global efforts to keep emissions within the carbon budget as addressed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed by the Paris Agreement and of the opportunities for developing carbon market mechanisms described in the Agreement’s Article 6. By linking a crypto currency to a ‘de facto’ commodity, Climatecoin offers a precious tool for digital currencies actors in finding a reliable and rewarding solution to their stabilisation needs.
As for traditional carbon markets operators, Climatecoin represents the ideal solution in their quest for flexible and dynamic market products. Technical barriers and transaction costs have historically represented significant lock-ins in carbon markets’ development, limiting their full implementation and reducing their potential as effective tools in mitigating global carbon emissions. Enjoying the flexibility typically characterising crypto currencies, Climatecoin grants a dramatic cut in transaction costs for carbon markets’ initiatives, becoming by far their ideal future.
While such reasons already represent a solid basis for both crypto currencies and carbon markets actors to converge towards Climatecoin, this latter one has even more revolutionary potentials in a medium-to-long-term perspective. With the Paris Agreement likely to consolidate over the years, realities like Climatecoin may transform themselves into real representative currencies, whose impact on the global monetary system may be far bigger than any current expectation…

MICHELE STUA