Justin Sun Promises to Commit $1 Million to Greta Thunberg Initiative


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Coinspeaker
Justin Sun Promises to Commit $1 Million to Greta Thunberg Initiative

The head of Tron Foundation Justin Sun publicly announced on Wednesday that he is going to grant $1 million to the young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s attempts to raise global awareness of climate change.

Sun’s announcement came as a response to last week’s COP25 UN climate conference in Madrid that ended with no deal on carbon markets. The negotiations are postponed until next year when countries will have to come up with more ambitious goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, in order to fulfill the terms of the 2015 Paris accord. What really happened is that after two weeks of negotiations, the “high ambition coalition” made up of the countries of the European Union and some smaller developing countries, hopes to put political pressure on all governments to more thoroughly commit to the 2015 Paris accord in 2020 through updates to their national climate plans.

However, social media didn’t really like Sun’s announcement, calling it “hypocritical” and “false.” Some even cynically noted that this is only one among many stunts Sun has recently done to advertise himself (and/or TRX). Just for reminder (if needed): the last one included Sun cashing out $4.57 million for lunch with Warren Buffet that never happened.

Also, a lot of people believe that Greta is just a political marionette that politicians (and others) use to promote themselves. Is Sun the Same? Whatever happens, hope he won’t invite her to lunch too.

Bitcoin Has the Biggest Carbon output

When measuring for carbon output, cryptocurrencies (especially Bitcoin) show as much less efficient than, for example, Visa.

In data from the 2017 CleanCoin research report showed that Bitcoin’s 56,000,000 Th/s hash rate at the time of the study has since doubled. Ethereum, by comparison, has a hash rate of 114 Th/s – but even then, ETH still consumes 30,000 times more energy per transaction than Visa.

TRON’s carbon is probably similar to Ethereum’s given both projects share much of the same code.

The thing is, miners and investors have much to worry about when it comes to the carbon footprint. The problem is, that when the crypt market falls, many major coins can approach a point of no return.

Take NEM Foundation for example. Last year it was forced to radically restructure after the falling XEM coin price almost bankrupted their operating budget. Similar to it, EOS block producers are already eating into their own funds after the coin price fell below $2.50.

Be it as it may, new initiatives to tackle blockchain for the emergent carbon trading market are already happening. One of it is the global tokenized carbon credits trading platform launched by AirCarbon this October.

At the same time, the liberal Free Democratic Party in Germany has backed the use of cryptocurrency as an enticement to reward active climate protection by creating a token that would be valued by its guaranteed redemption against carbon emission certificates.

For now, all that we know is from the last CoinShares’ research from June, that 74.1% of Bitcoin mining is powered by renewables.

Greta is Just a Successful PR Project

However, an analyst with the Belarusian Institute of Strategic Research (BISR) Yekaterina Rechits says that Greta Thunberg is just a PR project. She commented that “many were aware of the fact that this is a certain project that is promoted through PR technology.”

She said Great has a promoter or even a promotion group that is behind her rise that now is turning her into an object for “scientific mythologization, a product of mass culture. She meets with well-known political and cultural figures and so on.”

Justin Sun Promises to Commit $1 Million to Greta Thunberg Initiative