Perianne Boring: Busting the Biggest Bitcoin Myths

Today, Commander Divine speaks with Perianne Boring, founder and president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, the world's largest trade association representing the blockchain industry. Perianne’s mission is to advocate and educate the public and lawmakers about the future of blockchain. In this episode, Perianne busts some of the biggest myths about the cryptocurrency space, including Russian sanctions, environmental impact, and more. Key Takeaways: Myth #1: Bitcoin is bad for the environment. It currently takes 189 terawatts to mine Bitcoin.This is about .1% of the world's energy production. And, over 60% of the energy going to mine Bitcoin is coming from sustainable sources. (We’re also starting to see use cases where crypto mining can actually help stabilize the energy grid.) The energy used to mine Bitcoin is a small fraction of the emissions that are created to mine gold, power our financial sector and support our military sector. Myth #2: Russia is using crypto to evade sanctions. There's a current narrative that says Russians are flocking to crypto to evade sanctions. But there is no evidence of that, and there is nothing that would lead us to believe that that would ever be the case in the future. Since Russia entered Crimea in 2014, they've been working to sanction-proof their economy and diversify out of US dollar reserves. Crypto was not a part of their like sanction-proofing strategy at all. Even if they wanted to start using crypto for illicit finance, law enforcement has significant tools to track and trace the flow of cryptocurrencies, due to the open-source nature of blockchains. Even the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network put out a statement saying that we are not seeing crypto used for sanctions evasion. Myth #3: Crypto is used for money laundering. .05% of crypto transaction volume has been linked to illicit activity. The open-source data shows us that illicit finance using crypto is not common. And it's also decreasing as a percentage and a portion of the markets. My