This is a Charles Brett’s start-of-the-week Enterprise Times ‘blockchain catch-up’ Week 20. Necessarily it is idiosyncratic and selective.
It is not intended to be comprehensive but does seek to highlight ‘Quick Takes’ on specific developments as well interesting pieces to read, a listing of some (not all) announcements/press releases and pointers to upcoming events.
Quick Takes – Charles Brett’s Blockchain Catch-up Week 20
Bitcoin’s growing energy problem: ‘It’s a dirty currency’
According to an FT Long Read: to academics who for years have been measuring bitcoin’s energy intensity, (Elon) Musk has simply pointed out an established truth, albeit in his eccentric manner. It is a question so far largely ignored by governments, by heavy-hitting environmental charities, and by the banks and exchanges that facilitate the vast cryptocurrency industry. “Bitcoin alone consumes as much electricity as a medium-sized European country,” says Professor Brian Lucey at Trinity College Dublin. “This is a stunning amount of electricity. It’s a dirty business. It’s a dirty currency.”
Quick Take: This is, in effect, an expansion of Gillian Tett’s comments on Bitcoin (q.v. last week’s (Week 19’s) Quick Takes). It goes into further detail and it is about more than the Bitcoin element in the title. Though it is behind the FT’s paywall, it is worth trying to access it as it brings together several dimensions relevant to blockchain and crypto-assets. For example, the FT points out that the European Central Bank (ECB) described cryptoassets’ “exorbitant carbon footprint” as “grounds for concern”. In comparison, Italy’s central bank recently described the eurozone’s payments system, Tips, as having a carbon footprint in 2019 that was 40,000 times smaller than that of Bitcoin.
7 pieces to read – Charles Brett’s Blockchain Catch-up Week 20
- Fed chair Jerome Powell floats central bank digital currency and more regulation of cryptocurrencies
- Ecosystems are a team sport – and blockchain must be the referee
- DLA Piper’s blockchain and digital assets news and trends
- ‘I want to make blockchain technology useful for society’
- Nascar team Roush-Fenway Racing enters the world of blockchain
- Glencore, Umicore to trace battery cobalt with blockchain technology
- Candela Coin creates consumer-facing transactive solar energy system.
Selected announcements/opinions – Charles Brett’s Blockchain Catch-up Week 20
- Spanish stock exchange to test blockchain for SME financing (announcement)
- NFTs: the art of blockchain (opinion) Bank of America Joins Paxos Network – eyeing ‘Same-Day Stock Trade Settlement’ (announcement)
- Farm to Plate food supply chain solution aims to add transparency (and) protect against disruptions (announcement)
- Chainlink Labs furthers enterprise focus (and) joins Hedera Governing Council (announcement)
- VitalPass, a blockchain-based system to track COVID-19 vaccination, launches in Colombia (announcement)
- Bosch, Ocean Protocol, represented by BigchainDB, and Fetch.ai have joined Catena-X, bringing their collective expertise in market, mechanism, and token design (announcement)
- Bears, bulls, or something else altogether? Crypto experts weigh in on recent volatility (opinion).
Selected upcoming events
- Consensys 2021, May 24th – May 27th, 2021
- Central Bank Digital Currencies (IMN Synchronize Virtual Series) Wednesday, May 26th, 2021 – 1000 ET/1600 UTC
- Blockchain Fest 2021 (10th-11th June 2021)
- Global DeFi Summit 2021 (24th June 2021)
- Blockchain Conference/Blockchain Expo Europe 2021 (23rd-24th November 2021)
- LA Blockchain Summit (November 2nd-3rd, 2021)
- Blockchance Europe 2021 (8th-10th December 2021 – was July 7th-9th, 2021).