ChiaCoin finally debuted earlier today as the first green cryptocurrency with a trading price of over $1,500, crossing the $1,800 mark and then finally plummeting to $830 hours after trading began. As you can see, like most other cryptocurrencies, Chia is also quite volatile with its value reducing by half in just four hours. Regardless, the selling point of this new digital currency is its eco-friendly nature which itself is a result of how it operates.
Unlike Bitcoin and Ether, ChiaCoin requires large volumes of digital storage (HDDs and SSDs), and because they consume much lower power than GPUs and CPUs that power most existing blockchain networks, it has a much smaller carbon footprint. However, it’s worth noting that SSDs have a much shorter lifespan than GPUs and CPUs, depending on the usage, and may actually result in a higher amount of eWaste.
Till now, Chia hasn’t affected the prices of HDDs and SSDs by that much, although there have been rapid fluctuations. At the end of the day, how much of an impact it’ll have on the storage industry depends on how popular (read: how expensive) it turns out to be after a month or so. Over the past couple of hours, it’s value has continuously dropped, and if this trend continues, it’ll be safe to say that you won’t have to worry about storage prices surging.
