Crypto carbon offsets market: What is it and why is it attracting investors like Mark Cuban?

cnbctv18.com:

The crypto industry has been focussing hard on making the business more environment friendly. This has reportedly led to a bump-up in the crypto carbon offsets markets, drawing investments from investors like billionaire Mark Cuban.

Over 17 million carbon credits worth more than $100 million are currently tied to tokens called BCT and traded on unregulated markets, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.Carbon offsetting involves engaging in activities that restore the planet’s green cover to reduce the atmospheric carbon content. Private organisations and not-for-profit institutions develop projects that measure carbon reduction and issue an equivalent amount of carbon credits.

For example, a company can pledge to go carbon-neutral by buying credits from another company that has caused less pollution in a particular year. Each credit represents one tonne of carbon emission reduced.“Offsetting essentially means for every ton we remove, we emit a ton somewhere else,” Kate Dooley, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne who studies the impact of carbon accounting, told Coindesk in an interview.A survey by Ecosystem Marketplace in October last year suggested the voluntary carbon offset market was set to cross $1 billion for the first time with all-time market value of $6.7 billion.Also Read: Carbon offsetting - What does it mean, its significance, how can you offset your carbon footprintCrypto proponents expect carbon offsets to bring greater transparency in the process as current industry standards are unclear, and the absence of oversight makes it difficult to gauge the performance.When companies aim to compensate for the emissions they generate, they buy these credits that obligate them to participate