Blair Fix

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Is Bitcoin More Energy Intensive Than Mainstream Finance?

University of Glasgow

Roderic Page

![8VlGI2hk
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width="128" height="128" style="float:right;"}First off, let me say that
what follows is a lot of arm waving to try and obscure how little I
understand what I\'m talking about. I\'m going to sketch out what I
think is a \"radical\" idea for a [GBIF
Challenge](https://www.gbif.org/news/1GQURfK5jS4Iq4O06Y0EK4/2018-gbif-ebbe-nielsen-challenge-seeks-open-data-innovations-for-biodiversity)
entry.

> **TL;DR** GBIF should issue it\'s own cryptocurrency and use that to
> fund the development of the GBIF network by charging for downloading
> cleaned, processed data (original provider data remains free). People
> can buy subscriptions to get access to data, and/or purchase GBIF
> currency as a contribution or investment. Proceeds from the purchase
> of cleaned data are divided between GBIF (to fund the portal), the
> data providers (to reward them making data available) and the GBIF
> nodes in countries included in the geographic coverage of the data (to
> help them build their biodiversity infrastructure). The challenge
> entry would involve modelling this idea and conducting simulations to
> test it\'s efficacy.

The motivation for this idea comes from several sources:

1\. GBIF is (under-)funded by direct contributions from governments,
hence each year it essentially \"begs\" for money. Several rich
countries (such as the United Kingdom) struggle to pay the fairly paltry
sums involved. Part of the problem is that they are taking something of
demonstrable value (money) and giving it to an organisation (GBIF) which
has no demonstrable financial value. Hence the argument for funding GBIF
is basically \"it\'s the right thing to do\". This is not really a
tenable or sustainable model.

2\. Many web sites provide information for \"free\" in that the visitor
doesn\'t pay any money. Instead the visitor views ads and, whether they
are aware if it or not, are handing over large amounts of data about
themselves and their behaviour (think the recent scandal involving
Facebook).

3\. Some people are rebelling against the \"free with ads\" by seeking
other ways to fund the web. For example, the [Brave web
browser](https://brave.com) enables you to buy BATS ([Basic Attention
Tokens](https://www.basicattentiontoken.org), based on Ethereum). You
can choose to send BATS to web sites that you visit (and hence find
valuable). Those sites don\'t need to harvest tyour data or bombard you
with ads to receive an income.

4\. Cryptocurrency is being widely explored as a way to raise funding
for new ventures. Many of these are tech-based, but there are some
interesting developments in conservation and climate change, such as
[Veridium](https://veridium.io) which offsets carbon emissions. There
are links between efforts like Veridium and carbon offset programmes
such as the [Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve](http://rimba-raya.com), so
you can go from cryptocurrency to trees.

5\. The rather ugly, somewhat patronising furore that erupted when
Rwanda decided that the best way to increase its foreign currency
earnings (as a step towards ultimately freeing itself from dependency on
development aid) was to sign a [sponsorship deal with Arsenal football
club](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/29/rwandas-30m-arsenal-sponsorship-divides-opinion).

Now, imagine a situation where GBIF has a cryptocurrency token (e.g.,
the \"GBIF coin\"). Anyone, whether a country, an organisation, or an
individual can buy GBIF coins. If you want to download GBIF data, you
will need to pay in GBIF coins, either per-download or via a monthly
subscription. The proceeds from each download are split in a way that
supports the GBIF network as a whole. For example, imagine GBIF itself
gets 30% (like Apple\'s App Store). The remaining 70% gets\' split
between (a) the data providers and (b) the GBIF nodes in countries
included in the data download. For example, almost all the data on a
country such as [Rwanda](https://www.gbif.org/country/RW/about) does not
come from [Rwanda](https://www.gbif.org/country/RW/publishing) itself,
but from other countries. You want to reward anyone who makes data
available, but you also want to support the development of a
biodiversity data infrastructure in Rwanda (or any other country), so
part of the proceeds go to the GBIF node in Rwanda.

Now, an immediate issue (apart from the merits or otherwise of
blockchains and cryptocurrency) is that I\'m advocating charging for
access to data, which seems antithetical to open access. To be clear, I
think open access is crucial. I\'m suggesting that we distinguish
between two classes of data. The first is the data as it is provided to
GBIF. That is almost always open data under a CC0 license, and that
remains free. But if you ant it for free it is served as it is received.
In other words, for free access to data GBIF is essentially a dumb
repository (like, say, [Dryad](https://datadryad.org)). The data is
there, you can search the metadata for each dataset, so essentially you
get something like the current [dataset
search](https://www.gbif.org/dataset/search).

The other thing GBIF does is that it processes the data, cleaning it,
reconciling names and locations, and indexing it, so that if you want to
search for a given species, GBIF summarises the data across all the
datasets and (often) presents you with a better result that if you\'d
downloaded all the original data and simply merged it together yourself.
This is a valuable service, and its one of the reasons why GBIF costs
money to run. So imagine that we do something like this:

1.  It is free to browse GBIF as a person and explore the data
2.  It is free to download the raw data provided by any data publisher.
3.  It costs to download cleaned data that corresponds to a specific
    query, e.g. all records for a particular taxon, geographic area,
    etc.
4.  Payment for access to cleaned data is via the GBIF coin.
5.  The cost is small, on the scale of buying a music track or
    subscribing to Spotify.

Now, I don\'t expect GBIF to embrace this idea anytime soon. By nature
it\'s a conservative, risk-averse organisation. But I think something
like this idea deserves serious attention, ideally from people with much
better understanding of the issues that my own \"I saw this on Twitter
therefore it must be cool\" level. One way to move forward would be to
model how such a system would work, based for example on data on web
site visits and data downloads on the current GBIF portal. I suspect
models could be built to give some idea of whether such an approach
would be financially viable. It occurs to me that something like this
would make a great GBIF Challenge entry, particularly as it is gives a
license for thinking the unthinkable with no risk to GBIF itself.


First off, let me say that what follows is a lot of arm waving to try and obscure how little I understand what I'm talking about. I'm going to sketch out what I think is a "radical" idea for a GBIF Challenge entry. The motivation for this idea comes from several sources:  1. GBIF is (under-)funded by direct contributions from governments, hence each year it essentially "begs" for money.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Is Bitcoin More Energy Intensive Than Mainstream Finance?

Towards a biodiversity token: Bitcoin, FinTech, and a radical suggestion for the GBIF Challenge