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Comment by loceng | Hacker News Reader

The profits from Bitcoin mining so far seems to have won out using this mechanism..

... Can we turn CO2 into a physical solid? My chemistry is non-existent but here is a thought experiment: what if harvesting CO2 and using it to press coins was given real monetary value? Just get it out of the air and spend it, however you can figure that out. Would that help? Or is it too easy to synthesize such that the incentive would be immediately gamed?

Well, those coins would be uncomfortable to hold in your pocket at 194.7 K (−78.5 °C; −109.2 °F), but there are some initiatives for pulling solid carbon out of it [0]. There's even an XPrize for doing "stuff" with co2 [1].

  0: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220119121411.htm
  1: https://carbon.xprize.org/prizes/carbon

A quick comparison: first Google result says we'd need to sequester 20 billion tonnes of CO2 a year to achieve net zero without any other reductions. Another first Google result says the total worldwide reserves of copper amount to 890 million tonnes.

Essentially it's either going to be so cheap that trying to use it as currency is impractical, like carrying around pennies, or so overvalued that you'd surely destroy the economy? You'd have to use paper currency backed by tonnes of carbon - which is just a roundabout way to arrive at carbon credits!

I don't know. Perhaps we should ask the DeBeers what they think about turning CO2 into valuable solids. They might take issue.

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