Blockchain, climate damage, and death: Policy interventions to reduce the carbon emissions, mortality, and net-zero implications of non-fungible tokens and Bitcoin by Jon Truby, Rafael Brown, Andrew Dahdal & Imad Ibraham (2022)

‘The art industry has commercialised and popularised non-fungible tokens (NFTs), with the volume and value of NFT transactions rapidly growing to US$ 10.7 billion in Q3 2021. The increase in NFT transactions has drawn the attention of the art market to the consequent carbon emissions resulting from verifying transactions in proof-of-work blockchains supporting NFT transactions. With CO2-related deaths attributable to NFT transactions, social pressure from the art market has helped to progress the switch away from the deliberately polluting proof-of-work blockchains to more sustainable consensus protocols’