One River Files To Offer Carbon Neutral Bitcoin ETF

Asset management firm One River has filed for regulatory approval to offer a bitcoin ETF that would purchase carbon credits.

Asset management firm One River has filed for regulatory approval to offer a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) that would be carbon neutral through the purchase of carbon credits.

The One River Carbon Neutral Bitcoin Trust, as the product would be called, will factor in adjustments to reflect the current spot prices of carbon credits needed to offset the “estimated carbon footprint attributable to each bitcoin,” per a filing with the U.S. Securities And Exchange Commission.

Through a partnership with Moss Earth, based in Uruguay, the trust would purchase MCO2 tokens which represent certified reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

“The MCO2 tokens issued by Moss are assets encrypted and tokenized utilizing blockchain technology and are stored on a registry managed by Verra,” according to the filing. “Each circulating MCO2 token is intended to represent a claim on a certified carbon credit held in an aggregated pool of carbon credits within the Moss account on the Verra Registry.”

Many firms in the U.S. have applied to offer a bitcoin ETF, as institutional interest in BTC ramps up, but none have yet been approved. And Bitcoin’s energy consumption has been a hot topic lately, with many firms indicating plans to mine BTC in environmentally-friendly ways.