Bitcoin consumes as much electricity as entire countries, and 62% of the electricity used for Bitcoin mining globally in 2022 came from fossil fuels. Bitcoin’s energy-hungry technology has revived decommissioned coal-fired and fossil fuel power plants and caused substantial environmental and social damage. 

Left unchecked, Bitcoin’s climate destruction is likely to accelerate — yet traditional financial services companies continue to fuel Bitcoin’s expansion by investing in Bitcoin mining companies and offering new investment products and services tied to Bitcoin. 

This report evaluates the role nine large financial services companies are playing in Bitcoin’s climate-wrecking growth. All of these companies have connections to Bitcoin and have failed to take meaningful action to solve the problem despite making climate and sustainability pledges.

Greenpeace USA is calling on BlackRock, Fidelity, Vanguard, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to: 

• Publicly acknowledge Bitcoin’s pollution and its negative climate and community impacts
• Publicly support a code change that switches Bitcoin to a cleaner protocol that does not rely on energy and carbon-intensive digital mining
• Fund startups, nonprofits, academics, and other developers that are working on sustainable blockchain technologies and ways to change Bitcoin’s code
• Pause further Bitcoin expansion until a code change addresses Bitcoin’s climate impact

View the full report here