One of the proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies that's gaining a lot of attention right now for its eco-friendly status is Cardano (ADA +2.40%). Here's Fool.com contributors Chris MacDonald and Jon Quast to discuss what Cardano is up to in this regard, and why this could be a competitive advantage for this blockchain. This discussion took place on the Jan. 12 edition of "The Crypto Show" on Backstage Pass.
Editor's note: This article has been edited to clarify that Cardano would not be the first carbon-negative blockchain.
Jon Quast: The one thing we do know is right now it does take up a lot of energy and that does create a lot of controversy regarding the environmentally friendliness of cryptocurrencies and in some environmentally friendly news, we did want to talk about Cardano. Cardano, symbol ADA.
Cardano is announcing that it is going completely carbon negative via planting trees. As I saw it, I think it's called Cardano Forest is looking to plant one billion trees over the next few years. It's next several years, but already hitting a milestone of a million trees.
Chris MacDonald: Yeah, it's pretty incredible. They're making quite a bit of progress on this. There are a lot of environmental folks who tout tree planting as probably a bigger solution than necessarily cutting back on certain forms of energy consumption. And with electricity and not being fully renewable yet, this is something that investors have their eye on more.
Even with proof-of-stake, there's some energy consumption along the value chain. For Cardano, the ability to offset that with planting trees, it's definitely an interesting strategy to be the greenest cryptocurrency out there. Cardano is proof-of-stake now, it's faster and the fees are lower than some of the larger competing blockchains. It's one that's certainly on the radar of a lot of investors as a true proof-of-stake play.
But this is an interesting element with it. I dove into a little bit here in this particular piece. It's something that I think a lot of true eco-friendly investors that are looking at cryptocurrency is that future and want to think of the future as one that we would want to hand down to our grandkids, might want to consider as an investment rather than something that's much more energy-intensive. It's definitely an interesting value proposition for investors.
Quast: As a wannabe farmer myself and somebody who is very interested in soil ecology, it's something that I found really interesting. I had to look up where are they planting these trees. A couple of the countries that I saw mentioned on here, we're Haiti and Madagascar. Those are two countries that really have had their landscapes just shredded [laughs] over the years by just poor environmental practices.
You look especially in Haiti where they share an island right with the Dominican Republic. On the Dominican Republic side, lush tropical, beautiful. On the Haiti side, very depleted. But it's the same chunk of land. It has the ability with some little bit of help. It looks like this is a chance for Cardano to come in here and do some good. Man, you fix a landscape, you really improve the lives of the people, you improve the water situation, all that kind of stuff. I really was interested in this and I'm glad that you brought it to the table.
MacDonald: Yeah. I think it's an interesting way to maybe "market" the Cardano cryptocurrency. There are other tokens, for example, Crypto.com Coin that had that bigger unit deal with what was the Staples Center announced now is the Crypto.com Arena. There's some tokens that are out there that are promoting themselves and marketing themselves.
But something like this is something that's real, it's tangible, and it's meaningful for a lot of investors. Those who actually really care about the environment and they view cryptocurrency as maybe a threat to the environment, well, Cardano is out there trying to actually solve a problem and do it in a way that's not going to necessarily endanger the future. That's something that maybe a lot of investors can really get behind.
