Hello and welcome. You are listening to Patrick Boyle on Finance, a podcast exploring ideas from quantitative finance, examining events occurring in markets right now and financial history to see what lessons can be taken away, including interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world of finance. To learn more about the podcast, visit

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I probably don't need to tell anyone in my audience what Bitcoin is or explain much about

blockchain technology. I recently posted an investing survey and more of my audience than I expected

are cryptocurrency investors. Not surprising, perhaps, as Bitcoin has rallied from around $7,000

last year to around $50,000 today, a sevenfold increase in one year. A move like that does tend

to draw some attention. Even if you

have no interest in Bitcoin, you may have heard that Bitcoin mining is energy intensive

and therefore not good for the environment. You might even have heard that Bitcoin mining

currently uses more energy than the entire nation of Sweden. At a time when we're told that

we desperately need to cut back carbon emissions, many are asking if it makes sense to devote

a Sweden's worth of energy to a new form of currency. I should be clear though that not everyone

agrees that Bitcoin mining and blockchain technology

are bad for the environment.

Some of the people reaching for a new green future, including Elon Musk, Kathy Wood and

Jack Dorsey are also cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and this has confused some of their

environmentalist followers. A month ago when Elon Musk tweeted that you can now buy Tesla's using Bitcoin,

people replied to his tweet with,

why not cut out the middleman and install a petrol engine in the thing?

Well, a few days ago, the people at Square, Jack Dorsey's FinTech Company, and Arc Invest,

Kathy Wood's TechFIN company, released a paper entitled, Bitcoin is Key to an Abundant Clean

Energy Future, attempting to make the green case for cryptocurrencies.

...