OPTION, D ALL OF THE ABOVE

Let me explain,

An NFT is a unique cryptocurrency token that can take the form of pretty much anything digital — art, a GIF, or even Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s first tweet. (For a more detailed look at what an NFT actually is, check out this breakdown.) There have been some initial estimates of how much power an NFT uses up and, consequently, how much planet-heating pollution that generates.

Take “Space Cat,” an NFT that’s basically a GIF of a cat in a rocket heading to the Moon. Space Cat’s carbon footprint is equivalent to an EU resident’s electricity usage for two months, according to the website cryptoart.wtf. That website used to let people click through the estimated greenhouse gas emissions associated with individual NFTs until creator Memo Akten took it down on March 12th. Akten, a digital artist, had analyzed 18,000 NFTs and found that the average NFT has a carbon footprint somewhat lower than Space Cat’s but still equivalent to more than a month’s worth of electricity for a person living in the EU. Those numbers were shocking to some people. But then Akten saw that the website had been used to wrongly attribute an NFT marketplace’s emissions to a single NFT. He took the site offline after he discovered that it “has been used as a tool for abuse and harassment,” according to a note posted on the site.