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Is Crypto *Actually* Destroying the Planet?

By Li Jin Means of Creation

By Nathan Baschez Means of Creation

Nathan Baschez is the cofounder and CEO of AI word processor Lex. He cofounded Every, was the first employee at Substack, and co-created Product Hunt.

Means of Creation

Is Crypto Actually Destroying the Planet?

“Quantify the impact, reduce it as much as possible, and offset the rest” says Joseph Pallant - founder of the Blockchain for Climate Foundation

Li Jin

Nathan Baschez

Feb 15, 2022 · 2 min readUpdated Jan 16, 2026

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You can watch this episode on YouTube or listen to Means of Creation on your podcast app of choice.

In this second episode of our new web3 explainer series we ask an important, and hard to answer question: is crypto *actually* destroying the planet?

Over the last year, crypto has witnessed mainstream adoption, with billions of dollars of value exchanged across different blockchains. But this shift has created a pressing problem: the current process of mining blocks and validating decentralized networks is extremely energy intensive. This means that running popular networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum has a massive carbon footprint.

For instance, a single transaction on the Ethereum blockchain is equivalent to the power consumption of an average US household over 7.86 days. Researchers at Cambridge University have estimated that the global mining of Bitcoin uses more electricity than entire countries—countries the size of Argentina, Sweden, or Pakistan.

An increasing number of artists, creators, collectors, and environmentalists have voiced their concerns around crypto’s impact on our climate and the need to spur change. But is their concern well-founded?

In this episode, we take a step back to fundamentally understand the problem. Is crypto actually destroying the planet? How is it doing so? And more importantly, what can we do about it?

We're joined by Joseph Pallant, the founder of the Blockchain for Climate Foundation, which is aiming to “put the Paris Agreement on the blockchain.” Joseph has been operating in this space for multiple years—his work, insight, and advocacy makes him the perfect guest to unpack this divisive topic with refreshing nuance.