"I’ve also asked about how it’s possible to generate 500 million Carbon Coins from just 500,000 carbon credits"
That's very simple: instead of selling tonnes you sell kilos then you have 1000 kilos instead of 1 tonne. This is called fractionalization and mny registries already allow for this. There are several use cases for which this is needed, like automated offsetting transations where a % of a purchase goes to buying and retiring credits. Or think or Carbon Removals where one credit is priced above $150. We may went to retail kilos of it and not entire tonnes, especially for smaller transaction in B2C context.
Thanks for this Lucas. I understand that carbon credits can be split into any number of "coins" or "tokens". In 2018, I wrote about the Poseidon Foundation splitting carbon credits from the Cordillera Azul REDD project in Peru into grams to sell with Ben & Jerry's ice cream (https://reddmonitor.substack.com/p/can-buying-ben-and-jerrys-ice-cream).
The difference with the "Carbon Coin" is that we (so far) do not know anything about the projects that generated these 500,000 carbon credits, except that they are on the Verra registry. Which means that we have no way of knowing what the carbon credits are worth (or even what type of project generated the carbon credits).
However, the illustration of the Carbon Coin app in the post above shows that 1 USDT = 20 CC and 1 CC = 1 KG Carbon Credits. So one Carbon Coin costs 0.05 USDT. Which means that China Carbon Neutral Development Group is selling each carbon credit for 50 USDT (1000 x 0.05). That seems quite high, depending of course on which projects generated these carbon credits - the MSCI Global Carbon Credit Price Index for 2025 was US$3.5 per carbon credit (https://www.msci.com/research-and-insights/blog-post/carbon-credits-come-of-age-in-2025).
My question to Verra was to see whether they have any regulations about the tokenisation and fractionalisation of carbon credits from the Verra registry. Rather than asking "how it's possible", I should have asked whether it was allowed under Verra's regulations.
Verra's response reveals that it is still working on its tokenisation regulations and is hoping to complete these regulations by the end of this year. But the launch of the Carbon Coins "appears to be inconsistent" with the Verra Registry Terms (https://reddmonitor.substack.com/p/the-launch-of-500-million-carbon).
Yes totally agree on that, there is no information on credit/project IDs. Hopefully this it only at the time of announcement and more data will be available soon.
Verra has had other issues and priorities to solve before tokenization, so I understand that this is still WIP. However, what happend at the time of the initial ban, what the tokenization of already retired credits, which goes against the ethos and principles at Verra.
If a marketplace can buy Verra credits, and then sell them through a private platform with whitelisted users via a tokenized form.. Well this happens a lot and should probably be authorized.
The status quo is actually worth: today when a broker buys and hold credits on its registry account, we don't know how this brokers distributes its credits exactly (if there is no integration), on which marketplace, with what instrument, what bundles.
They may well fractionalize and do the accounting themselves at the end to report on Verra only entire transaction. So the status quo is that many transactions are still anonymous and happen in a blackbox.
"I’ve also asked about how it’s possible to generate 500 million Carbon Coins from just 500,000 carbon credits"
That's very simple: instead of selling tonnes you sell kilos then you have 1000 kilos instead of 1 tonne. This is called fractionalization and mny registries already allow for this. There are several use cases for which this is needed, like automated offsetting transations where a % of a purchase goes to buying and retiring credits. Or think or Carbon Removals where one credit is priced above $150. We may went to retail kilos of it and not entire tonnes, especially for smaller transaction in B2C context.
Thanks for this Lucas. I understand that carbon credits can be split into any number of "coins" or "tokens". In 2018, I wrote about the Poseidon Foundation splitting carbon credits from the Cordillera Azul REDD project in Peru into grams to sell with Ben & Jerry's ice cream (https://reddmonitor.substack.com/p/can-buying-ben-and-jerrys-ice-cream).
The difference with the "Carbon Coin" is that we (so far) do not know anything about the projects that generated these 500,000 carbon credits, except that they are on the Verra registry. Which means that we have no way of knowing what the carbon credits are worth (or even what type of project generated the carbon credits).
However, the illustration of the Carbon Coin app in the post above shows that 1 USDT = 20 CC and 1 CC = 1 KG Carbon Credits. So one Carbon Coin costs 0.05 USDT. Which means that China Carbon Neutral Development Group is selling each carbon credit for 50 USDT (1000 x 0.05). That seems quite high, depending of course on which projects generated these carbon credits - the MSCI Global Carbon Credit Price Index for 2025 was US$3.5 per carbon credit (https://www.msci.com/research-and-insights/blog-post/carbon-credits-come-of-age-in-2025).
My question to Verra was to see whether they have any regulations about the tokenisation and fractionalisation of carbon credits from the Verra registry. Rather than asking "how it's possible", I should have asked whether it was allowed under Verra's regulations.
Verra's response reveals that it is still working on its tokenisation regulations and is hoping to complete these regulations by the end of this year. But the launch of the Carbon Coins "appears to be inconsistent" with the Verra Registry Terms (https://reddmonitor.substack.com/p/the-launch-of-500-million-carbon).
Yes totally agree on that, there is no information on credit/project IDs. Hopefully this it only at the time of announcement and more data will be available soon.
Verra has had other issues and priorities to solve before tokenization, so I understand that this is still WIP. However, what happend at the time of the initial ban, what the tokenization of already retired credits, which goes against the ethos and principles at Verra.
If a marketplace can buy Verra credits, and then sell them through a private platform with whitelisted users via a tokenized form.. Well this happens a lot and should probably be authorized.
The status quo is actually worth: today when a broker buys and hold credits on its registry account, we don't know how this brokers distributes its credits exactly (if there is no integration), on which marketplace, with what instrument, what bundles.
They may well fractionalize and do the accounting themselves at the end to report on Verra only entire transaction. So the status quo is that many transactions are still anonymous and happen in a blackbox.
If a credit never enters a national registry, it’s already a virtual asset.
If you tokenize it, it becomes a virtual double-helix.
No extra carbon is removed — only the story gets thicker.