Moritz Platt
Moritz Platt is a Capital Markets Technology Manager at Google, where he designs and builds cloud-based financial platforms. His work focuses on the design and architecture of distributed systems.
Alongside his role at Google, he is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London in the Department of Informatics and an Associate Lecturer at the University of Birmingham, where he teaches Payment Systems on the MSc Financial Technology programme. His academic research examines identity- and reputation-based consensus protocols, security in decentralised systems and resistance to Sybil attacks. It also covers applications of distributed ledger technology in financial markets.
He holds a PhD in Computer Science from King’s College London. His earlier degrees are from TU Berlin and Birkbeck, University of London.
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Energy Demand Unawareness and the Popularity of Bitcoin: Evidence from Nigeria
Stephen Ojeka
Andreea-Elena Drăgnoiu
Oserere Ejemen Ibelegbu
Francesco Pierangeli
Johannes Sedlmeir
Zixin Wang
Oxford Open Energy, 2 (2023), oiad012
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Decentralized cryptocurrency networks, notably those with high energy demand, have faced significant criticism and subsequent regulatory scrutiny. Despite these concerns, policy interventions targeting cryptocurrency operations in the pursuit of sustainability have largely been ineffective. Some were abandoned for fear of jeopardizing innovation, whereas others failed due to the highly globalized nature of blockchain systems. In search of a more effective angle for energy policy measures, this study adopts a consumer-centric perspective, examining the sentiments of Nigerian cryptocurrency users (n=158) toward Bitcoin’s sustainability, a representative cryptocurrency known for its high electricity demand. Three main findings emerged: 1) Even among those self-identifying as highly knowledgeable, most considerably underestimated Bitcoin’s electricity consumption. 2) Participants with a more accurate understanding of Bitcoin’s energy demand were more inclined to support sustainability measures. 3) Most of this supportive cohort viewed private entities as the primary stakeholders for implementing such measures. Given these findings, we suggest that consumer education should be at the forefront of policy initiatives aimed at cryptocurrency sustainability.
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The More You Know: Energy Labelling Enables More Sustainable Cryptocurrency Investments
Andreea-Elena Drăgnoiu
Zixin Wang
Zhixuan Zhou
Proc. 1st Workshop on Fintech and Decentralized Finance, IEEE, Hong Kong (2023), pp. 73-78
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The energy consumption of popular cryptocurrencies varies greatly: cryptocurrencies based on proof-of-work (e.g. Bitcoin) consume much more electricity than their counterparts that use alternative consensus mechanisms, such as proof-of-stake (e.g. Ethereum). Nevertheless, proof-of-work cryptocurrencies dominate the market. We investigate whether energy labelling, i.e., displaying electricity consumption information on centralized exchanges, influences consumers’ product preferences. We conduct a control/treatment study: during this study, participants with an interest in cryptocurrencies (N = 200) are presented with a fictitious cryptocurrency exchange user interface. The treatment group is shown a user interface that displays energy labels, while the control group receives no information related to electricity consumption. Participants then declare how likely they are to acquire particular cryptocurrencies. We measure the treatment effect and find a significant negative correlation (p = 0.002) between being exposed to energy labels and expressing a strong preference for energy-inefficient cryptocurrencies. Based on this finding, we reflect on the sustainability issues of cryptocurrencies and discuss how energy labelling on centralized exchanges can be applied to nudge investors away from energy-inefficient cryptocurrencies. This indicates that regulators would be well advised to consider energy labelling to address the adverse climate impacts of cryptoassets.
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