Frequently Asked Questions

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No. The myth that Bitcoin is bad for the environment stems from de-contextualized information about energy consumption and use.

Bitcoin hashing machines and data centres (often referred to as Bitcoin miners) engage in an energy-intensive process. However, all aspects of the digital economy and our modern electrified world require energy. Consider the entire global banking system, and all of the energy required to process transactions with our current fiat currencies like the Canadian dollar, US dollar, Euro and others. Consider all of the banking transactions, and powering office buildings, ATMs, local branches, and much more. Then there is the environmentally-damaging issue of gold mining, which Bitcoin is gradually replacing.

Bitcoin is much more efficient than traditional banking and gold mining on a global scale and it also has numerous environmental advantages. This includes the ability of Bitcoin data centres to locate at landfills, farms, and oil wells to capture escaped methane and flare gas, turning them into electricity and preventing them from escaping into the atmosphere. 

Upward of 60% of Bitcoin mining is powered by renewable-energy sources (including wind, hydro, and solar) and the economic incentives inherent to Bitcoin mining actually help drive sustainable energy innovation, as miners constantly seek to increase profits by lowering their electricity costs in a world where renewable energy is fast becoming the cheapest option. Bitcoin mining is also helping to stabilize electrical grids and to accelerate electrification of our societies, bringing energy to parts of the world that still don't have electricity, and reducing dependence on hydrocarbons for energy. [1] [2] [3] [4] 

Bubbles are economic cycles characterized by unsustainable rises in market value. They eventually pop when investors realize prices are much higher than an asset’s fundamental value. Bitcoin is occasionally compared to an infamous early speculative bubble: the 17th century Dutch “tulip mania.” In 1637, speculators caused prices for some tulip varieties to surge 26x. The bubble lasted six months, crashed, and never recovered. This is not what happens with Bitcoin.

Since it was launched in 2009, Bitcoin has gone through multiple price cycles. In each cycle it has reached new all time highs followed by significant price corrections. In every single case, following these price corrections, Bitcoin has recovered and continued on to reach new all time highs. This is not what happens in bubbles, like the tulip mania bubble.

Oscillations in Bitcoin’s price form a pattern typical of young markets where they are gradually growing in size and market cap. Bitcoin is just 15 years old and its global adoption rate continues to grow quite quickly. As this adoption rate grows, Bitcoin's market cap grows and its price volatility gradually diminishes. Bitcoin's core features of scarcity, deflationary supply, decentralization, permissionless access, and a transparent public ledger continue to be the bedrock of its value and why it continues to achieve new highs over time relative to other currencies and assets. So how fast is Bitcoin being adopted? The adoption rate for Bitcoin has outpaced the global adoption rate of the Internet. [1] [2] [3]

In recent years, Bitcoin has become increasingly popular as an inflation-resistant store of value, much like gold was for centuries. That's why some refer to Bitcoin as “digital gold”. A growing number of companies (Tesla, Square, MicroStrategy, Tahinis) have bought millions or even billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin as a means to better manage their assets. And, the use of BTC as a currency for day-to-day transactions continues to grow around the world.

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, introduced in 2009. Since then, a dizzying number of other "crypto" tokens have been launched, trying to benefit from the attention and adoption that Bitcoin has achieved.

The reality is that the overwhelming majority of these other crypto tokens have no actual use cases and, in many instances, are verifiable ponzi schemes. Many are explicitly marketed by venture capital groups who pre-mine a new token (ie, take a quantity for themselves before launching the token) and then invest marketing money to promote the token to unsuspecting consumers who are hoping to cash in on the next big thing (kind of like the dot com craze of 1998 - 2000). As the price rises, the venture capitalists sell their pre-mined tokens at a profit, causing the price of the token to crash.

Our recommendation is to focus on Bitcoin only. Bitcoin not only has a proven track record but a number of distinct features that make it a class apart from the world of other crypto tokens. These features include its fixed total supply; its basis in open-source software; its fully-transparent issuance supply and schedule; its decentralization (there is no central company or controlling party); its grounding in "proof of work" mining; and other features.

If you decide that you wish to explore other crypto tokens, we highly recommend first learning about Bitcoin (how it works, its key features) so that you have a proper point of reference and know what questions to consider when learning about other crypto tokens.