With its massive CO₂ emissions, cattle breeding makes a significant contribution to climate change. Curious: Now the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which has also been heavily criticized for its CO₂ balance sheet, is supposed to bail out the industry – and make cattle breeding more climate-neutral. At least that’s what the Florida Beef Initiative and a local organization, Bitcoin Bay, written on the flag. They work together on solutions to improve the local food supply network. They also want to take action against the mass production of bad beef.
Thanks to the cooperation, local ranchers can send and receive funds via the fast Bitcoin Lightning network. The goal: a decentralized network of like-minded consumers and companies.
The problems of the beef industry: Bitcoin should help
The US beef industry is currently dominated by four major companies. They control around 85 percent of the entire market. The co-founder of the initiative that has now started, known as “June”, criticizes the lack of transparency, like a local medium reported. According to him, the “Big Four are buying South American beef grown on steroids and other substances illegal in the US.” This leads to “poor health outcomes and harms the climate”.
He wants to use Bitcoin to revolutionize the industry. “Decentralizing the food supply means making sure every district has a micro-producer,” June said. The project not only relies on decentralized production. The payment process should also be processed decentrally and transparently with Bitcoin. This would not only benefit local beef production, but also work against factory farming.
Bitcoin is used in this context to act more independently from the big companies. Since the CO₂ emissions of rural businesses are significantly lower than those of factory farming, the industry can become greener, it is said. In a first attempt, a local cattle ranch sold $3,000 worth of meat in BTC.
It remains to be seen how much the cooperation can really contribute against the powerful market monopoly of the industry. It is nonetheless a first attempt to use bitcoin to tackle centralization in beef production while reducing carbon emissions, no matter how small the outcome.
Bitcoin as a remedy against the climate crisis
In addition to Bitcoin as a means of payment against central power monopolies, mining can – contrary to the voices of many critics – positively shape the energy transition. Because mining systems can be switched on and off very flexibly, they are able to act as spontaneous buyers for surplus production. With them, the utilization of energy networks could not only be controlled better, but regenerative energies could become profitable more quickly thanks to the Bitcoin-related cross-financing.
