What’s the Carbon Footprint of Your NFT?

We first covered NFTs a few weeks back, but in case you’re new here (welcome!), non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are one-of-a-kind digital assets. They’re like your middle school baseball card collection went digital. While there are no plastic card organizers or packaging waste — are NFTs more environmentally friendly?

When an artist “mints” their digital artwork, they begin the mining process. This process takes a lot of energy. In fact, the average NFT produces emissions comparable to driving 500 miles in a gasoline-powered car.

Still, the market has exploded, driving astonishingly high prices for everything from tweets to gifs to Nyan cat.