June 3rd [Full Transcript]
This is a transcript of our recent community AMA session with DEXTF founder Nicola Lanteri and Luis Adaime from Moss Earth in the DEXTF telegram channel. This AMA took place on June 3rd, 2021.
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Dirk: Welcome to the DEXTF Green Bitcoin Token AMA with @Nicola81 from DEXTF and @bzcarbonking from Moss Earth! Welcome to the group, Luis!
Luis, before we dive into the questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to the DEXTF community, and share some background on your journey to have found Moss Earth?
Luis Adaime: of course!
Hi everyone, I am Luis Adaime, CEO and Founder of Moss.earth, the world's largest carbon platform. I am a Stanford engineer and worked for 18 years in investment banking and hedge fund management before founding Moss.earth.
Basically what Moss does is to select the best Amazon Forest conservation projects that issue carbon credits, acquire those in large quantities, add value via technology (geomonitoring and tokenization), and distribution: we have listed our token on Celo, and on the Ethereum network (ERC20 on uniswap, mercado bitcoin in Brazil, probit, etc).
Moss clients have directed 15 million usd to forest conservation projects in one year.
Dirk: Great, thank you. The obvious first question I suppose is:
So what is this GBTC and why should people care about it?
Luis has already described what Moss Earth does, maybe Nicola can tell us about this combination
Nicola: Sure, hi everyone!
Technically, the Green BTC is a tokenized carbon-neutral bitcoin consisting of WBTC and tokenized carbon credit MCO2 issued by Moss.
Bitcoin mining consumes a lot of energy, more than some countries. This mining is critical as it provides the bitcoin network its security and thus its value. However, the energy needed to run the network increases every day and thus it’s important to find more sustainable and energy-efficient ways of scaling the network.
By wrapping WBTC and MCO2 into a single token, we offset the carbon emission of producing new BTC.
Dirk: Many people think that green #bitcoin won't be green enough. What is your take on that? Also, I would like to know how you plan to evolve your offering further.
and a similar question:
The green narrative will persist for quite some time, and you may be ahead of the market, do you expect to extend your offering to include other tokens as well?
Nicola: I'll take the second one. The Green BTC is the first offering to test the market. We plan to create other green tokens like Green ETH as well as Green Indices that represent the DeFi project.
Dirk: thank you, Nicola!
Luis, do you have an opinion on the question of whether it is "green enough" to use your carbon offsets? Also, in your opinion, can I add the MCO2 token to make anything ESG compliant?
Luis Adaime: Well, using Moss carbon offsets is as green as it can get, as the money from the sale of tokens is indirectly going to remunerate the conservation of vast areas in the Amazon forest. The sale of 1.3mn tokens since the beginning of the company has sent US$ 15 million to projects that protect an area of over 1.3mn hectares (the size of a small country like Jamaica or Lebanon) and remunerated the work of conservationists. Preserving this area protected 800 million trees in the past 12 months.
One can add the mco2 token to make literally anything ESG compliant or at least carbon neutral. An equity portfolio for example. Any asset portfolio. We can offset any type of product, company, or investment vehicle. Like all DEXTF products.
Dirk: Thank you, very interesting!
So let's say I don’t know how to get MCO2, how can I do it, and is there an easy and intuitive way to buy it to pair it with any token?
Nicola: The MOC2 is an ERC20 token, you can simply get it on DEX like Uniswap. The token is also available on the DEXTF Dapp as an underlying so all fund managers can create new fund and add the MCO2 as an underlying of the fund and make it carbon neutral
Luis Adaime: That's it 👆🏻🌱
I would add that offsetting crypto is quite inexpensive. Offsetting a single BTC emission since inception = 0.10% cost. Eth and others are even cheaper.
Dirk: What determines the price of these tokenized carbon credits? It seems they can appreciate in value, are people using them for speculation also?
Luis Adaime: Mco2 tokens, like carbon credits, don't expire. So they are a hybrid of asset and utility tokens. One can buy and hold for as long as desired. And the price, as in the underlying carbon offset market, is determined by supply and demand. Prices are up 3x in 12 months.
Dirk: A question for both of you: What is the vision for environmentally friendly tokens? Do you think that moving forward this is more of a meme or something that investors will care about deeply?
And another question that is maybe related to this one: Do you see green Bitcoin being used in payments and will we see merchants being pushed to accept this version instead of the traditional Bitcoin?
Nicola: Well, we have seen a lot of discussion on media channels like Twitter about concerns over emission and miners using "dirty" energy. You can agree or disagree about this statement but the discussion will surely continue for some time and investors will try their best to be environmentally friendly in their investment choices.
Bitcoin, in general, is still a long way from being used as a payment method but if we can make it also "Green" why not?
Dirk: If you have anything to add feel free to post it, Luis!
otherwise: Nicola, let's consider how our community can use GBTC today:
Having established its sustainability from an environmental POV, how do I as an investor go about swapping my BTC for green BTC? (Given there might be low liquidity in the uniswap pool)
Also for people up to date on investor rewards in DEXTF, does this give access to any kind of rewards in DEXTF?
Luis Adaime: I would just add that, as our life on the planet is more and more threatened by climate change, assets like trees, forests and clean water will become more valuable and scarce. So humanity will tend to value them more, making them good assets to hold.
Definitely not a fad 💪🏻🌱😉
Nicola: The $XTF.GBTC was developed only a few days ago, and a pool on Uniswap was created paired with WBTC. This allows investors to simply swap their WBTC for Green BTC with pretty much zero IL. For users who wish to mint new tokens, they can do this using our DEXTF Dapp, simply provide WBTC and MCO2 in kind to create new XTF.GBTC tokens. This will give investors access to the investor rewards (APR 70% right now) and if you then add these tokens to the liquidity pool on Uniswap you can earn up to 130% APR which is a very competitive return:
The more tokens are added to the pool the easier it is for new investors to buy new Green BTC, so we encourage our community who have WBTC on their wallets to be part of this initiative as it's a good "GREEN" return.
Dirk: I just saw one more previously asked question:
This (green BTC) might be of interest to big funds that are interested to be ESG-compliant, do you have any entity that is currently in discussion to deposit some BTC?
Luis Adaime: We have one river asset management as a client for their bitcoin fund offsetting and are discussing with them. (https://www.coindesk.com/asset-manager-one-river-files-for-carbon-neutral-bitcoin-etf-in-us?amp=1, https://www.institutionalassetmanager.co.uk/2021/04/20/298955/one-river-and-moss-create-carbon-neutral-crypto-asset-fund)
Dirk: I have heard about that one from the traditional finance world, yes! Great to have the opportunity with DEXTF to offer a decentralized alternative!
Guys, I think there are no further questions for now! Thank you so much for taking your time to answer these questions, Luis! It was great to have you here!
Luis Adaime: Thank you all and congrats to DEXTF for creating this product!
Nicola: Thanks everyone, we are very excited about this partnership with Moss.Earth and we hope to continue our collaboration to develop new "green" products soon. thanks @bzcarbonking for being our guest