Moss Crypto Carbon INDEX v1.0

Carbon Footprint of Bitcoin and Ethereum Blockchain Products

by Daniela Godoy Falco,

co-authors: Andre Gomide and Ana Carla Netto da Silva

Reviewed by Dr. Munir Soares, Renan Kruger and Luis Felipe Adaime CFA

Abstract. Many market players have already announced their concerns about the allegedly high carbon footprint from cryptocurrencies and are looking forward to offsetting their emissions or moving to cleaner cryptocurrencies. However, Moss MCO2 Tokens make offsetting these emissions feasible, inexpensive and easy. In the cryptocurrency’s context, Moss.Earth has developed a methodology to estimate the carbon footprint from the custody and transactions of Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well from transactions of any token on the Ethereum platform. Called Moss Crypto Carbon INDEX V1.0, the tool estimates greenhouse gas emissions by allocating the network impacts of players in a disaggregated way. Our finding are that carbon emissions are much lower than what is currently marketed: Digiconomist bitcoin and/or ethereum index indicate a value of 237 tCO2 of a single mined Bitcoin. Even in the most conservative scenario, Moss estimates that the historic carbon footprint of a single mined Bitcoin is 10.35 tCO2e. The difference between them is significant and not completely explained, but one of the reasons is that Digiconomist does not allocate the environmental impact between mining and transaction, in addition to considering only the annualized most conservative possible scenario.