By now, you’ve probably heard of Bitcoin or Ethereum. Cryptocurrencies these days are more predominant and publicized. People accept crypto because it is anonymous, fast, and trustworthy. On the other hand, it causes many problems. One of the most obvious is the excessive use of electricity. According to the New York Times, “the process of creating Bitcoin to spend or trade consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than is used by Finland, a nation of about 5.5 million.”. The most energy-consuming part of the whole mining rig is the GPU.
What is a GPU? It’s a part of a computer that allows it to have the capability to display live pictures and animations. Due to their potential for calculating a crazy amount of data, they are used to calculate bitcoin hashes, the identification for bitcoin. Thus, they are the primary workforces for bitcoin mining. During the process of looking for the correct hash, GPU consumes an enormous amount of electricity. As the quantity of GPUs that are needed to calculate the hashes increases, the waste of energy increases.
It makes people wonder, is there a substitute for Bitcoin? Crypto that is greener and eco-friendlier? Chia Coin might be your answer.
Chia was founded in 2017 by Bram Cohen, the founder of BitTorrent - A famous downloading software that is known for its fast speed. According to Bybit Learn, “the entire Chia Network consumes an average of 47,752 kilowatts (kW) as of July 19, 2021, based on the current net space of 31.0 EiB( The amount of disk storage. One EiB refers to 1 billion Gigabytes. Windows 11 is 70 Gigabytes). That’s a fraction of power compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum.”
What made Chia an outlier? Instead of GPU mining, Chia utilizes any disk space to mine Chia Coin. In some sense, the Chia system comes up with its random number, and the winning miner is the one who has the closest match. Since disk mining doesn’t require intense processing on hashing, it consumes much less energy.
Chia can be applied in several ways. Lower thresholds allow Chia to be more accessible. For instance, disks are always available online. In contrast, GPUs are often out-of-stock and the price always fluctuates. Under the assumption of equal computing power, one GPU is 80% more expensive than a single disk. Thereby, people can set up Chia mining stations within an affordable budget. As a result, the lower price allows more people to benefit.
Chia can be a solution for poor families in Africa or for people who have low revenue. Under ideal circumstances, one day’s profit can provide two days of food money, said Ken Riggs, the vice president of customer success in Chia.
Chia still has a long way to go to be accepted by the public, but its dedication towards a greener currency should be respected. Under the scheme of fighting global climate change, choosing Chia in terms of cryptocurrency can be a step for success.