UK blockchain carbon offset platform raises $45M in seed funding

February 8, 2023 Coin Telegraph

UK blockchain carbon offset platform raises M in seed funding

Carbonplace says it will use the funds to scale its services and become the "SWIFT of carbon markets."

According to a press release published on Feb. 8, blockchain carbon credit transaction network Carbonplace has secured $45 million in an investment round from its nine founder banks with a combined $9 trillion in assets under management. The banks are BBVA, BNP Paribas, CIBC, Itaú Unibanco, National Australia Bank, NatWest, Standard Chartered, SMBC, and UBS. The London-based fintech has also announced that it will become an independent entity, led by new CEO Scott Eaton.

As told by Carbonplace, the company will use the investment to strengthen its platform and workforce, allowing it to scale its services to a larger client base of financial institutions and seek partnerships with other carbon market players, such as registries and stock exchanges around the world. Carbonplace has been described as the "SWIFT [Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications] of carbon markets" that will allow participants to share carbon data in real time, ensuring a secure and traceable settlement of transactions.

Commenting on the development, Robert Begbie, CEO of NatWest Markets, cited data from McKinsey showing that "global demand for voluntary carbon credits is likely to increase by a factor of 15 in the next several years." He said Carbonplace is uniquely positioned to meet that demand by providing scalable technology to environmentally-conscious businesses.

While the service is expected to launch later this year, Carbonplace has already piloted trades with companies such as Visa and Climate Impact X. Carbonplace uses its owndistributed ledger technology to facilitate offset transactions and has hailed digital wallets as a tool to "enable owners to reliably demonstrate ownership to the market, reducing the risks of double counting and simplifying reporting."

*Projections of the global carbon offset market | Source: BBVA, BloombergNEF*

Could GameFi and carbon currencies reverse blockchain’s climate stigma?

May 25, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Carbon Emissions

Toucan Protocol’s Rob Schmitt believes blockchain gaming could have a much better environmental reputation if games integrated carbon offsets.

Nonfungible tokens (NFT) and blockchain technology have developed an unfortunate stigma in some sections of the community for being bad for the environment — but could that perception be changed by integrating carbon offsets into NFT gaming?

GameFi, or gaming finance, marry NFTs and gaming. Blockchain games account for nearly $12 million in daily volume from over a million gamers according to app tracker DappRadar. Toucan Protocol COO Rob Schmitt thinks that volume and those users could be harnessed to benefit the environment.

Schmitt told Cointelegraph that using carbon offsets as an element in blockchain games could create “by far the most planet-friendly system we’ve ever seen.” He envisions a GameFi space that uses carbon offsets as in-game currency, and urges game makers to get creative.

“Games don't have to have an entire economy based on offsets, but they should be embedded in a way that makes sense,” he said. Schmitt said there are already teams of game makers working with Toucan to bring carbon offsets into their work, such as Atlantis World.

“The narrative that ‘blockchain is killing the world’ is an argument we can turn around with carbon offsets.”

Toucan Protocol tokenizes certified carbon offsets on the Polygon (MATIC) network as Base Carbon Tonnes (BCT).

Demand for gaming companies to go green is ramping up as game studio Space Ape Games, which publishes Fastlane went carbon neutral in 2019. Green Geeks reported that game publishers SuperCell, Rovio and Sybo are offsetting their company’s carbon emissions.

The perception that blockchain technology is bad for the environment is often propagated by the traditional gaming industry. Major online game outlet Steam banned any titles with NFTs or cryptocurrency last October. In February, game provider Itch.io tweeted that “NFTs are a scam” that aren’t useful for anything other than “the destruction of the planet.”

That negative perception betrays a lack of awareness of the carbon emissions associated with different consensus mechanisms. The Polygon network and a number of other NFT and gaming focused chains use the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm which means power consumption and environmental impact is greatly limited.

Cointelegraph reported in April that the Polygon team aims to make the network carbon neutral this year. Other blockchain networks that support NFT gaming and feature meager or neutral carbon footprints include Wax (WAX), Solana (SOL), and BNB Chain (BNB). Ethereum (ETH) is expected to switch to PoS in the coming months with August the most recent estimate for the Merge.

While ubiquitous climate conscientiousness is a lofty goal, Schmitt admits that “everything doesn’t have to be climate action.” Furthermore, gamers don’t necessarily have to be aware that the games they enjoy may be carbon neutral because it doesn’t take much action on their part to have an effect. Schmitt said:

“The vast majority of games won’t be related to climate action, but only a small portion of them are needed to do a lot of good.”

He says that climate activism doesn’t need to be the main focus for game developers, especially if they are already deploying work on climate-friendly blockchains.

“Developers should focus on making fun games first, and they may be able to attract new audiences with carbon offset integrations.”

KlimaDAO increases carbon offset stash by 50% in two months

January 12, 2022 Coin Telegraph

carbon offsets

The carbon offset accumulating DAO on Polygon has rapidly increased the amount of offsets it has in its treasury by increasing spending and diversifying its source of offsets.

Carbon offset protocol KlimaDAO has now accrued over 14 million on-chain carbon offsets and is causing waves in the more traditional carbon offset industry.

The aim of KlimaDAO is to acquire as many carbon offsets as it can in order to drive up their value and make offset-generating activities more profitable.

The Mark Cuban-backed project’s treasury has added over 5 million carbon offset tokens since late Nov. 2021, bringing the total to 14.5 million as of the time of writing. Its offsets are tokenized and bridged to Polygon (MATIC) in the form of Base Carbon Tonnes (BCT) by Toucan Protocol and the new MCO2 tokens by Moss, which were first added to the treasury on Jan. 6. KlimaDAO now owns the majority of the 17 million BCTs in existence.

The decentralized autonomous organization is spending $100 million on offsets.

Much of the $100 million used for buying offsets comes from the sale of bonds, which are used to increase the funds available to the DAO. Users are incentivized to buy bonds by receiving a discount on KLIMA, the native token from the project. On Jan. 6, the DAO boosted the discount on KLIMA bonds to help raise more funds needed to buy more offsets.

The DAOs rapid acquisition of carbon offsets has caught the attention of the traditional carbon offset firm Gold Standard. CEO Margaret Kim criticised the DAO in the Wall Street Journal, suggesting the anon team behind the project posed transparency issues.

“We are also concerned about the fact that the founders are anonymous, which runs contrary to the need for transparency in climate action generally and carbon markets more specifically.”

KlimaDAO team responded to Kim’s concern telling Cointelegraph, “There are ways to provide assurances without being doxxed.” Being doxxed refers to revealing an anonymous individual’s true identity.

KlimaDAO founder Archimedes also addressed the issue of anonymity and trust in the on the Jan. 10 episode of podcast Planet of the Klimates:

“Are we ever going to be at a point where we have to reveal who we are? At some point, maybe, Klima becomes so powerful that world governments demand to know who we are.”

The team also told Cointelegraph that traditional firms like Gold Standard “may need more regulatory clarity into how a DAO works legally” in order to be more comfortable with the tremendous growth in the project.

The KlimaDAO team appears poised to take on the challenges associated with carbon offsets on the blockchain for the long term as it said, “We are prepared to do what it takes to make the DAO successful.”

SkyBridge buys 38,500 tons of carbon offsets

August 3, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin

SkyBridge Capital has purchased 38,436 tons of tokenized carbon offsets.

Global investment firm SkyBridge Capital has partnered with carbon credit provider MOSS Earth to purchase tokens representing 38,436 tons of carbon offsets.

SkyBridge announced the move on August 2, with founder Anthony Scaramucci forecasting that the Bitcoin mining industry “will be fully renewable by the end of the decade." For the meantime, Scaramucci believes carbon offsets offer an “effective” means for the sector to improve its ecological footprint:

"In the interim, carbon offsets represent an effective way to green the Bitcoin network and facilitate adoption by ESG-minded investors.”

SkyBridge is an institutional asset manager that provides exposure to BTC via fund products. The firm also has a pending application for a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

MOSS Earth is a climate tech firm that provides carbon credit-backed “MCO2” tokens for offsetting greenhouse emissions. As part of the partnership, SkyBridge used a “conservative” estimate to determine the carbon footprint associated with its Bitcoin holdings.

Moss sources carbon credits from independently verified projects such as Vera who combat deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest, and source their environmental initiatives through the sale of carbon credits.

Related: A green revolution in crypto mining? Industry answers wake-up call

SkyBridge joins several crypto firms that have purchased carbon offsets to reduce their environmental footprint this year, including crypto exchanges FTX, Gemini, and BitMEX.

Environmental concerns have hampered crypto’s narrative in 2021 following Elon Musk's May announcement that Tesla would halt accepting BTC payments until the mining sector is able to demonstrate it is verifiably sustainable.

A study published by the Bitcoin Mining Council on July 2 estimated that the global Bitcoin mining sector reached a 56% sustainable power mix in Q2. However, the survey was based on just three questions and relied on voluntary and self-reported responses from 32% of miners on the network.

Bitcoin Mining Operation Greenidge Generation Plans to Be Carbon Neutral Next Month

May 14, 2021 Bitcoin.com

carbon offsets

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