Liam Denning, Columnist

FTX Fiasco Shows Crypto’s No Green-Grid Hero

The past week’s debacle demonstrates the limitations of Bitcoin’s closed ecosystem. Power providers will be unimpressed.

November 16, 2022 at 12:23 PM UTC

By Liam Denning

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Crypto unplugged. — Crypto unplugged.
Photographer: Bloomberg

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Welcome to Elements, our daily energy and commodities newsletter. Today, Bloomberg Opinion’s Liam Denning looks at the collapse of FTX and crypto’s fraught energy ties. In markets, oil took a brief leg up after a tanker was attacked off Oman, while a key pipeline to Europe was shut Tuesday after its power source was knocked out. If you haven’t yet signed up to get Elements directly into your inbox, you can do that here.

The spectacular flameout of FTX reminds us that you can’t spell “cryptomania” without “pyromania.” Just as $16 billion seemingly going *poof* isn’t likely to advance the long-anticipated mainstreaming of Bitcoin et al., it should also be prompting some soul-searching about crypto’s relationship with energy.