Bitcoin Will Prevent Society (NATIONS) from Functioning Ethically in the Future

Tim Bond, partner and portfolio manager of Odey Asset Management, believes that bitcoin could prevent the company from functioning efficiently and ethically A portfolio manager at a major London hedge fund has warned that bitcoin, arguably the best-known cryptocurrency, has no real social utility other than as a tool for speculation and a means of laundering the proceeds of crime. Tim Bond, partner and portfolio manager of Odey Asset Management, also said - during an interview - that cryptocurrencies were damaging the planet: "In my opinion, bitcoin is a particularly vile asset class. "If bitcoin begins to replace fiat currencies [government-issued currency that is not backed by a commodity], governments' ability to tax, spend and redistribute will be severely impaired." He believes that bitcoin could prevent society from functioning efficiently and ethically. "In this sense, bitcoin is the spearhead of a particularly extreme form of libertarian anarchism, which is presumably why it is so popular in Silicon Valley," he said. Odey Asset Management, which has over $ 3 billion in funds under management, was founded in 1991 by billionaire Crispin Odey. Bond said neither he nor the company has a stake in bitcoin. Bitcoin mining is a form of control or registration that uses computer processing power. Bond cited a calculation by the Cambridge University Center for Alternative Finance that bitcoin mining consumes 118.17 TWh of electricity per year. "Bitcoin mining takes place mainly in Asian economies (65% in China), where the electricity supply comes from coal and other fossil fuels," he said. "We can therefore calculate that bitcoin mining produces about 55 million tons of CO2 [carbon dioxide] per year, equivalent to Finland's annual CO2 emissions and more than the emissions of countries like Denmark, Sweden and Norway. "Bitcoin has therefore added CO2 emissions equivalent to the annual production of an advanced medium-sized economy. And as the price of bitcoin rises, mining will intensify, producing even higher levels of CO2 emissions. "It is difficult to think of any other human activity that is both so useless and so harmful to the planet."