TRON founder and BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun upheld his decision to support the young Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg with a massive sum of one million US dollars ($1 million) last week, to help her raise global awareness regarding climate change and its environmental impact.
Teenage climate campaigner Greta Thunberg has managed to rile up quite a storm with her emotionally charged speeches and her zeal for battling climate change. The sixteen-year-old reformer has a long list of celebrities supporting her in her cause, and the Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun was the recent addition.
On 18th December 2019, the TRON mastermind decided to contribute one million US dollars to her campaign with an aim to do his bit to stop climate change. However, as a widely known fact, social media can be quite heartless at times. As soon as the announcement was made, the businessman was severely chastized for using the environmentalist’s campaign to promote his project TRON. Many accused him of piggybacking onto her success and draw attention to his cryptocurrency.
TRON founder Sun defends his move
However, during his interview with CoinTelegraph, published today, Sun explained what the grand-scale contribution meant to him. Although his tweet claimed that cryptocurrency could bring about the much-needed reduction in carbon footprints, it was unclear as to how his contribution and decentralized settlements, as he claims, would help the cause.
As a young entrepreneur, I share @GretaThunberg’s passion to change the world. Crypto will contribute immensely on reducing carbon footprint by implementing decentralized settlement. I would like to personally commit USD$1 Mil to @GretaThunberg ’s initiative. #cop25
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) December 18, 2019
Sun clarifies that decentralized settlements along with decentralized financial platforms reduce the need for paperwork as all the data is stored and managed through cloud computing. With decentralization, everything is based on cloud, requiring very little or no need for storing data records on paper, Sun added.
Moreover, since everything is in digital format, cloud computing systems do not depend on manual transportation methods. With a lesser need for travel, the burden on the environment is automatically reduced, Sun explained.
According to Sun, ledger documentation and paper-based documentation require postal services for authentication and approvals. Some KYC protocols also call for face-to-face verification, thereby causing people to travel and increase carbon footprint. If everything turns to decentralized finance, there will be no need to travel at all, Sun added.
Sun calls for an overhaul of banking systems and Bitcoin mining methods
As opposed to conventional banking methods, which have limitations in terms of geography, infrastructure and economic conditional, decentralized finance can bank the unbanked, says Sun. Imagine the negative environmental impact caused by a highly populated country; Sun continued, where a large number of resources are required to open bank accounts. Thus, blockchain is the answer to these problems and adopting it could bring about the desired change.
Sun also believes that utilizing the Point of Sales (PoS) system can efficiently address the pain points of the traditional Bitcoin mining methods based on Proof-of-Work (PoW). PoS can bring a massive reduction in energy consumption, and it is about time Bitcoin mining evolves with changing environmental needs, Sun concluded.
Featured Image by Flickr
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