Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Alternative Energy, Alternative Coin: Encouraging Miners to Endorse Renewables

Cryptocurrency With Mining Rewards Indexed 
To Renewable Energy Stocks As A Method To Increase 
Market Capitalization Of Renewable Energy Firms.

I. Purpose

The purpose of this brief paper is to outline a cryptocurrency that encourages currency “miners” to invest in renewable energy companies and policies.

II. Method

The proposed cryptocurrency intends to accomplish this positive externality by offering additional bonuses for miners whenever a block is solved and a specified renewable energy ETF’s (Electronically Traded Fund) value has increased or stayed constant since the last block was solved. 

While the cryptocurrency will always reward the miner who solves a block, the potential bonus should encourage miners to take external actions (Investing in the ETF, encouraging pro-renewable policies etc.), that increases the value of the ETF so as to increase the probability of earning bonuses.

A cryptocurrency can be programmed to do this to make a call to check the current price of the ETF whenever a block is solved, and then making the size of the payout conditional upon how the ETF has performed since the last block was solved.

A critical component to this is that the cryptocurrency does not actually interact with the ETF in any way or depend on an external organization to monitor the ETF or distribute the currency. Rather the entire system is hardcoded into the currency and the currency reward system simply tracks a public index.

III.  Why?

The current financial system has failed to address the issue of climate change despite overwhelming evidence of climate change and support for renewable energy. 

The Cryptocurrency solves this crisis by allowing people to adopt a new form of currency. 

As more people utilize the currency and demand for the currency increases, the profitability of “mining” new units of the currency increases. As the demand for these new units increase, more people will start mining and existing miners will invest more resources into mining. Meanwhile, to reap even larger benefits from mining, miners will have an external interest in supporting renewable energy companies, projects, and policies that will help the ETF maintain continued growth. 

With the continued ETF growth, the companies comprising the chosen ETF will have a larger market capitalization and be able to expand their renewable energy efforts at a faster rate.