Very few of us know anything about Bitcoin, or any of the other “cryptocurrencies” such as Ripple and Ethereum that are now traded in the digital realm. This was followed by the release of open-source Bitcoin software in 2009, with the subsequent mining of the first Bitcoins by Nakamoto. But all transactions are recorded in a public ledger that is always available for scrutiny by the Bitcoin community. Which points to a real Bitcoin downside: environmental impacts. More than two billion people, many of them extremely poor, have dumb phones, and these are completely adequate for participating in Bitcoin transactions.