Celebrity investor Kevin O\u2019Leary\u00a0(aka \u201cMr. Wonderful\u201d on ABC TV series \u201cShark Tank\u201c)\u00a0says that institutional investors concerned about the environmental impact of Bitcoin have found a new \u2014 albeit indirect way \u2014 to own \u201cgreen\u201d Bitcoin.<\/p>\n
According to the transcript (by The Daily Hodl) of an interview that was released on his YouTube channel last Friday (March 11), the Shark Tank star said that although some Bitcoin mining firms are buying carbon offsets to reduce their carbon footprint in an attempt to deal with institutional investors\u2019 ESG concerns, the lack of clarity of this approach means that such investors have started focusing on investing in bitcoin mining firms that rely only on clean energy:<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the pressure came on for ESG [environmental, social and governance] mandates, they started buying carbon credits. That\u2019s not going to work because you\u2019re going to start to see in this year, I\u2019m speculating, that these large institutions are going to start demanding carbon credit audits, and you don\u2019t want to be in a company stock that has the risk of a carbon audit because the truth is it\u2019s almost virtually impossible to show and understand the tracking error of a carbon credit versus what you\u2019re actually burning in carbon.<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cSo all of the money is quietly moving right now to new mining companies, most of them private, that are going to use hydro, wind, solar and nuclear power because if you use any of those options for mining, there is no carbon audit. There is no offset necessary. You\u2019re not burning carbon.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n Apparently, he has recently invested in a Norway-based Bitcoin mining firm, which uses only green energy, and he explained how investors like him are putting pressure on this firm and others like it to hold rather than sell the bitcoins they mine:<\/p>\n \u201cWe have power at less than two cents a kilowatt-hour. Our stacks are remote. We\u2019re using the heat that\u2019s generated there for hydroponics and fish rookeries, and the stakeholders of that mine are many of the villagers that live there.<\/em><\/p>\n