In February, the investment business submitted an application to Canadian securities regulators for the establishment of a Bitcoin ETF.
Accelerate Financial Technologies intends to match each investment in their forthcoming Bitcoin exchange-traded fund with the planting of thousands of trees, as part of its commitment to environmental responsibility.
The Calgary-based investment services company has vowed to plant 3,450 trees for every $1 million CAD — around $792,000 at the time of writing — invested in its Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund, or ETF, according to a report published on Friday by Bloomberg.
With this move, Accelerate is working toward its goal of having its Bitcoin ETF be carbon negative, which means that it would remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than the energy necessary for Bitcoin mining and transactions would result in.
According to the corporation, each big investment would result in the offset of 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
According to Accelerate Chief Investment Officer Julian Klymochko, the company’s program is not equivalent to greenwashing, which is the practice of misrepresenting one’s own environmental credentials to achieve favorable treatment.
He stated that the company decided to plant trees rather than purchase carbon credits in order to designate the product as carbon negative.
Ninepoint Partners LP intends to offer a green Bitcoin ETF that appears to be comparable to the one offered by Accelerate Investments. In May, the company announced that it would purchase carbon credits in order to offset the environmental impact of the cryptocurrency held in its fund, according to Reuters.
Many organizations in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space — including mining companies — have proposed solutions that use green or renewable energy sources, in response to worries about the technology’s potential environmental impact on the environment.
According to Bank of America researchers, Bitcoin’s energy consumption has surged by 200 percent since January 2019 and is now similar to that of a small developed country, according to a report published in May.
The network’s “increasingly rapid use of fossil fuels,” according to prominent players in the space industry, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has also raised concerns.
In February, the investment business submitted an application to Canadian securities regulators for the establishment of a Bitcoin ETF. Under the ticker ABTC, Accelerate intends to list its product on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol ABTC, with units available in both US and Canadian currency.
As of this writing, no crypto ETFs have been approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States.
However, Canadian regulators have granted approval to a slew of firms seeking to launch Bitcoin and Ether ETFs in 2021, including offerings from investment fund manager 3iQ, Purpose Investments, the Evolve Funds Group, and CI Global Asset Management, among others.
