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I've heard some talk about a CO2 Coin before (one where a coin is mined by carbon capture). I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons why it would not work, but it would be the only kind of crypto I'd ever be interested in owning.


A centralized CO2 coin would work. Drop off your CO2 at our depot and we'll deposit coin in your account.

Not sure how you'd decentralize a physical process though.


I have no idea how to do this without opening yourself up to near-trivial cheating either, as the validation of work isn't intrinsically linked to the actual effort like current crypto coin systems rely on.

And if there's a centralized arbiter validating people's capture results, then you've just invented a centralized currency? Why have crypto at all? It sounds like carbon credits (with all it's failings) with extra steps.


Also runs afoul of the cobra effect -- people can burn more stuff to produce CO2, then capture and deliver it to retrieve coin.


> Also runs afoul of the cobra effect

And if it didn’t fall foul of that and if CO2 was over captured then most life on earth would die.


I don't think we have to worry about that any time soon.


> I have no idea how to do this without opening yourself up to near-trivial cheating either, as the validation of work isn't intrinsically linked to the actual effort like current crypto coin systems rely on.

This is known as the oracle problem and is actively being worked on.


It's already decentralized. U can give each other the CO2 capsule as a form of currency.


There’s a book with this at its core - Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.


I’m reading it right now. A fascinating exploration of how humanity may be able to act in the face of climate change.

It doesn’t try to sugar coat things and I appreciate that.


Considering the absolutely huge CO2/environmental impact of BTC and other proof-of-work cryptos, talking about a CO2-coin for the purpose of CO2 sequestration sounds like quite a joke to me...


But the whole point is that it's not a proof-of-work crypto, or at least not a proof of useless mathematical number spinning. It's based entirely on carbon capture.

There are non-proof-of-work cryptos already out there.


The more bitcoins you mint, the more carbon you can capture! Perpetual money machine!


There was recently a launch on the Ethereum mainnet for a carbon credit DAO called Klima. Might be worth checking out, I’m reading up on it myself.




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