Share this article
Kevin O'Leary Doubles Down on 'Green Bitcoin'
If miners can improve sustainability, they can attract more institutional clients and boost prices, the investor said at Consensus 2021 today.
Updated May 29, 2023, 12:05 p.m. Published May 24, 2021, 9:06 p.m.
Leading corporations are reluctant to add crypto to their balance sheets because of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues, entrepreneur and "Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary said during CoinDesk’s Consensus 2021 conference Monday.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
Less than 1% of institutions globally actually carry crypto as an asset class, he noted, and for that to change miners need to prove their coins are created sustainably, O’Leary said.
“Most of these institutions have both ethics and sustainability committees that filter offerings before they’re allocated on the investment committee. They’re not just singling out crypto," he said.
“We’re at the nascent beginning of this interest. Bitcoin is an asset that is here to stay, and now it's got to get in sync with what institutions want before they buy."
Elon Musk recently announced that Tesla has rescinded the option to purchase electric vehicles with bitcoin due to sustainability concerns, another example of how bitcoin's environmental impact has been rising up the issue agenda of late.
Read more: Crypto Long & Short: Why Tesla’s Reversal Is Good for Bitcoin
O’Leary is interested in “tagging,” or wrapping bitcoin that has been mined sustainably, and called upon miners to approach institutions with a plan.
While the idea sounds like a win-win, the use of mining pools and the essential fungibility of BTC has drawn skepticism from miners and prominent members of the industry. Nic Carter has called so-called “clean bitcoin” a chimera: something more imaginary than real.
Still, O’Leary, a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist, is eyeing opportunities to support firms that can offer resources and structure for green mining. Greener practices, he says, will help stoke demand and drive up asset prices.
“That is what institutions want, and when that dam gets released the amount of capital that will come into bitcoin… it’ll be the reason it goes to a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand.”
“Everybody that owns bitcoin today, regardless of how it was mined, is incentivized to solve this problem for one reason alone, price appreciation.”
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Cascade Unveils 24/7 Neo-Brokerage Offering Perpetuals on Cryptos, U.S. Stocks
The platform will let retail traders use one margin account to trade round-the-clock perpetual markets.
What to know:
- Cascade has introduced a 24/7 brokerage-style app for perpetual markets spanning crypto, U.S. equities and private-asset exposure.
- The firm is pitching a single, unified margin account with direct-to-bank U.S. dollar capability for deposits and withdrawals.
- The company has raised $15 million from investors including Polychain Capital, Variant and Coinbase Ventures.
Top Stories
