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Bitcoin's energy use is 'staggering' and a worry for big investors, Kleinwort investment chief says

MAP Asia Pacific Ltd

The energy use of bitcoin is a key factor that makes the cryptocurrency unattractive to institutional investors, the chief investment officer of Société Générale's UK private bank has said.


"We are very alarmed, I'm sure as others are, by the environmental aspects of bitcoin," Fahad Kamal, the investment boss at SocGen's Kleinwort Hambros bank, told Insider. He said the energy it used was "staggering."


Estimates from the University of Cambridge suggest that bitcoin uses more electricity each year than Argentina and Ukraine, due to the energy-intensive mining process.

As the price of bitcoin has soared in recent months, a number of investors have raised questions over bitcoin's energy consumption. Yet others argue that bitcoin increasingly uses renewable energy - and will do so more in the future.


Bill Gates told CNBC's Andrew Sorkin in a live-streamed Clubhouse session last week that the currency "uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind."

Kamal said bitcoin's energy use means it clashes with environmental, social and governance investing, which is becoming increasingly important in the financial world.


"If you think about various trends that are occurring in the market, right now, bitcoin is one but ESG is a much bigger one."


The issue of bitcoin's energy use has come to the fore in recent weeks, after Elon Musk's electric car company Tesla announced it had bought $1.5 billion of the currency in January.

Bitcoin is "mined" when computers are hooked up to the cryptocurrency's network to verify transactions. As a reward for this work, which involves solving puzzles, miners can sometimes receive small amounts of bitcoin.

Read More at https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/bitcoin-btc-energy-use-worry-big-investors-fahad-kamal-kleinwort-2021-2-1030131653

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