Hi, I'm Dan Pramak, and welcome to Axios Recap, where we dig into one big story.

Today is Tuesday, July 20th.

Jeff Bezos went up to space, Jeff Bezos came safely back down, and we're focused on the conflict between climate and cryptocurrencies.

Back in May, Elon Musk announced that Tesla would no longer

accept Bitcoin as payment, saying he was, quote, concerned about rapidly increasing

use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst

emissions of any fuel, end quote. Two things about that statement. First, Musk wasn't wrong. In 2019, Bitcoin mining and

transactions are estimated to have been responsible for up to 0.06% of all global energy-related

CO2 emissions. And Bitcoin energy use is only growing as Bitcoin becomes more popular,

and as mining often involves high-powered supercomputers running 24-7.

Two, it's also a bit tempting to roll your eyes at Musk for his epiphany because he suddenly

recognized a pretty well-known problem. But the reality is his statement does seem to have

kickstarted a much broader conversation about how to better foster both climate and

crypto without one harming the

other. One of the people who's been tracking these developments is Axios Energy reporter Ben Geeman,

who we ask to help describe the problem and if it's possible to rectify. The power consumption

and corresponding carbon emissions related to Bitcoin mining is certainly something that is

substantial and worth watching.

It's certainly not trivial. It's not the apocalypse on its own, but it's growing, and it's happening

at a time when the world needs to be sharply cutting emissions, not adding new sources of those

emissions. So as power grids worldwide move toward cleaner sources, that is going to lower the footprint

of Bitcoin mining. And also, you know, industrial processes going to lower the footprint of Bitcoin mining.

...