Greenpeace USA stops accepting Bitcoin donations due to environmental concerns
As debates about crypto's energy consumption rage on, some experts argue that Bitcoin "should die for the common good of the planet."
The American arm of Greenpeace, a non-governmental multinational environmental organization, has stopped accepting donations in Bitcoin (BTC) amid growing concerns about the crypto’s impact on the worldโs ecology, it told Financial Times yesterday.
โAs the amount of energy needed to run Bitcoin became clearer, this policy became no longer tenable,โ said a spokesperson for Greenpeace USA.
The organization first began accepting Bitcoin donations back in 2014 via payments processor BitPay. At press time, the corresponding page similarly states that Greenpeace is no longer accepting BTCโor any other crypto.
โGreenpeace USA no longer accepts donations in the form of Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency,โ says the donation page on BitPay.
Notably, the initial announcement of Greenpeace supporting Bitcoin donations has also been scrapped from the organizationโs website.
โAs a completely independent organization, we do not take money from corporations or governments and rely primarily on individual donations,โ said Ben Kroetz, Greenpeace USA director of online strategy, in the 2014 announcement. โBitPayโs reputation as a trusted and secure third party Bitcoin payment processor made it easy for us to begin accepting Bitcoin thus opening us up to new markets and donors.โ
“Bitcoin should die”
But it seems that lately, environmental concerns have been outweighing the benefits of exposure to new markets and donors. Larisa Yarovaya, a lecturer at Southampton University and a former Russian Paralympic swimmer, even went as far as suggesting that Bitcoin โshould die for the common good.โ
โBitcoin could be the first inefficient version of a disruptive technology. It should die for the common good of the planet and be replaced by a new model. It consumes more electricity than a country. All the rest is detail,โ Yarovaya told Financial Times.
She further argued that Bitcoinโs energy consumption canโt be justified even by the coinโs high price since BTC is a speculative asset that does not โcreate a substantial amount of employmentโ nor is it widely used for transactions.
Meanwhile, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who was one of the most well-known proponents of crypto, has also been raising concerns about Bitcoinโs environmental impact recently.
To be clear, I strongly believe in crypto, but it canโt drive a massive increase in fossil fuel use, especially coal
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2021
Tesla also stopped accepting Bitcoin payments for its carsโafter introducing the option just a couple of months earlier.