In a new episode of Decoded, CNN’s Anna Stewart focuses on cryptocurrency. From mining to blockchain, and from huge crypto operations to a country using Bitcoin as its official currency, Stewart discovers the digital currency revolution.
In the Gold Souk in Dubai, the co-founder of Crypto Oasis SaqrEreiqatexplains the financial precedent for cryptocurrencies, “Bitcoin in many ways is aligned with gold. One, it’s scarce. Two, it actually takes a lot of effort to mine it. I like to think we’re in the fourth monetary revolution. The first one was us using precious metals. The second one was paper money. We then moved to electronic money – that was essentially the same money but enabled electronically. And the fourth one being cryptocurrencies, which enable a whole new world.”
Stewart sees how cryptocurrencies are created through the mining process. The most successful mines are huge scale operations. She visits Boden, Sweden where cold air from the freezing surrounding landscape is pumped into the building to cool down mining machines. The energy intensive nature of mining cryptocurrency is one of the main controversies surrounding the industry.
Johanna Thörnblad, Swedish President at HIVEBlockchain Technologies explains that they use renewable energy from a hydro powerplant to run the factory, “In this area there is an abundance of energy and there’s small communities up here. So, in fact, there’s not enough inhabitants or companies to use all the energy that is available. So the community of Boden was inviting data centres to come to use this renewable, stranded energy really.”
The excess heat given off from mining operations can also be reused. Thörnblad says that there are plans to build a greenhouse to utilise the heat energy for growing vegetables, and Stewart sees how a tulip farm in Amsterdam is using similar technology to warm their greenhouses.
Stewart also discusses two sides of the crypto debate, meeting with YouTube crypto influencer Chris Jaszczynski,who funds his lavish lifestyle with cryptocurrency, and software engineer and outspoken crypto sceptic Molly White. White believes that regulation of the industry is needed, “I don’t know if it’s realistic to just sort of hope to snap my fingers and cryptocurrency will just go away. I think that it really will be up to regulators to provide some level of transparency.”
El Salvador has become one of the first countries to recognise Bitcoin as an official currency. One project promoting its adoption in the country is Bitcoin Beach. Director Mike Peterson speaks about their goal to create an ecosystem for the 64% of adults in the country who do not have access to bank accounts, “Bitcoin Beach was basically showing how Bitcoin could impact the lives of those who have traditionally been kind of locked out of the financial system.”
Some experts have said that Bitcoin is not paying off for the country, but Peterson argues, “Where else in the world is 20% of the population using Bitcoin in only a year? I mean, that’s much faster adoption than the credit card companies, than any financial innovation that we’ve seen.”
Meanwhile, digital money transfer company Strike and its CEO and founder Jack Mallers aim to use Bitcoin for a different financial innovation, “Strike is trying to make payments better, which is a really ambitious goal, but we do it with a really simple concept, which is using Bitcoin technology under the hood. So not subjecting people to the price or a lot of the complications, but we use it as a payment rail to make payments faster, cheaper, more global, and hopefully better for people”, he explains.
The programme sees how Mallers is helping small businesses in places like Ghana where Strike can make instant international transactions by converting local currency into Bitcoin and then back again, bypassing traditional wire transfers. Mallers claims it is significantly cheaper for the customer than traditional money transfer services, “We do charge a transaction fee to process the payment, it’s just significantly lower. I don’t need physical branches like Western Union, I don’t need working capital, I don’t need currency destinations in every country. It’s really thanks to the technology.”
See more from Decoded:
https://edition.cnn.com/specials/world/decoded
Decoded airs on Saturday 28th January at 08:30 GMT on CNN International
The show also airs at the following times:
Saturday 28th January at 05:30 GMT and 17:30 GMT
Sunday 29th January at 02:30 GMT and 11:00 GMT
