Mint Green
How Ethan Frey is using cryptocurrency to address climate change
by Dan Morrell
Illustrated by Valerie Chiang
Ethan Frey (BS ’99) didn’t find cryptocurrency—it found him. He was at a political conference in Berlin in 2014, and the only guy in the room wearing a suit approached him with a radical idea about a new kind of currency that was community-controlled and governed by rules favoring productive members of the community rather than just the powerful.
“That sounds great,” Frey told him, “but the banks will never buy it.” No, the man in the suit said: “With blockchain, you can make your own money, with its own rules.” Frey imagined the possibilities: an unhackable, equitable economic system. The kind of system that might, for instance, only loan money to businesses that were certified green.
The idea was perfectly suited to Frey’s background. Raised in Oakland as the son of a computer programmer, he was interested in tech early, writing code on a Commodore 64 as a child and eventually studying computer science at Caltech. “That’s where I really learned hardcore programming—and the theory that I still use today,” says Frey. He spent his early career in software and later moved into web development, with a years long detour into organic farming. In the eight years since meeting with the man in the suit, Frey has become a leader in the crypto space, launching several popular new crypto projects and appearing at industry conferences and on podcasts.
The combination of sustainability and technology is at the heart of Frey’s new venture, Wynd, a cryptocurrency with an environmental mission. In this conversation with Techer, Frey talks about how his project works, the kinds of big ideas he hopes to support, and what a wider revolution will require.
How did you come up with the idea for Wynd? And how exactly does it work?
Ethan Frey: Wynd is a result of trying to find an idea to support the environment that was most likely to work and that also had the shortest path from idea to action to impact. So we built a blockchain-based currency exchange that sends 25 percent of all transaction fees to a transparent environmental impact fund. The more people that trade our tokens, the more money that goes to environmental efforts.
The fees are only about 0.1 percent of the transactions, so they are small amounts. But if you’re eventually getting millions or tens of millions of transactions a day, that 0.1 percent can add up.
To launch the project, we gave out a bunch of free tokens and then created a governance system that allows users to vote on changes to the system. Right now, Wynd users are essentially debating how to debate, but when they get to start choosing the environmental project grants and addressing other really hard questions, it will be really interesting to watch.
What are some of the ideas that you would love to see Wynd move forward?
EF: We want to give money to projects that are moonshots. One of the projects we’re looking at is called the Weather Makers, and their big plan is to regreen the Sinai Peninsula. The Sinai is a total desert between Egypt and Israel, but in pre-Egyptian times, it was actually a forested area with pastures and they could harvest there. Then agriculture basically decimated it about 4,000 years ago.
So the Weather Makers are talking about seeding ecosystems in the desert that are based on saltwater, growing them out, and making them sustainable. We already have this problem around the world of expanding deserts, and people are even trying to build walls of trees to stop [those deserts] growing. But if we can regreen deserts, that’s a whole new solution. And I’d like to direct some money to help push that project along.
You have said that bear markets are the best time to build. Can you talk to me about the current state of crypto as you see it and why you think it’s true that bear markets are the best time to build?
EF: At some point in the bull markets, it’s speculation upon speculation: The price is going up and people buy in trying to make a quick buck. When it collapses, all the “quick money” people leave, but the people that really believe in it for the long term avoid a lot of that noise. And when it’s down, it’s a lot quieter and people can focus on asking, “Okay, what do you want to be two or three years from now?” I want to build long and steady, stable growth.
The cryptocurrency world still feels a bit insular. How do you make these revolutionary ideas more widespread?
EF: Yes, there’s still a very small population involved in the crypto space. To make it a real revolution, it has to get out of the crypto world. So you can build new models like Wynd with experimental people—the crypto types who will take the risks—and then once it’s really stable, you can start expanding. Maybe you can get UNESCO or the World Wildlife Fund involved by saying, hey, we have a functioning program that works on a small scale, and it’s not some Ponzi scheme—I can actually explain why it works.
At the end of the day, if we make something that works in our world, and say, the World Bank copies it, and does the exact same thing, it’s a success. I don’t need to make money off it. It’s not about me making a fortune. Expanding the idea is really the essential part.
I have a son and I want him to have a decent planet to live on when he’s older. So this is about me saying, “Hey, I have this cool tech talent and I want to do something to actually impact the future.” That’s meaningful. So I’m passionate about sharing that vision and hope more people join in it.
“I have a son and I want him to have a decent planet to live on when he’s older. So this is about me saying, ‘Hey, I have this cool tech talent and I want to do something to actually impact the future.’”
– Ethan Frey (BS ’99)