Throughout the start of 2021 there has been plenty of news around the crypto space, most of the news has come from investment opportunities as Bitcoin saw a big surge in price rising to an all time high of over $60,000 multiple times through the year, and options in meme coins like Dogecoin saw a huge benefit during the same period of time too. The biggest news however came from backlash seen as concerns around the environmental impact of the decentralized currencies, and how little had been known previously about the impact that it could have.
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Having found a lot of success recently as crypto payments have become more mainstream and becoming more available as a payment method in a growing number of online spaces, particularly with the likes of online gaming as this casimba casino review is one of the many that have started to accept crypt, it was inevitable that something would be found to discredit the growth, and with all of the attention that potential partnerships with the likes of Tesla bought, this is where much of the concern had started – the volatility and pricing has become less of a focus now with the bigger focus being solely on the environmental impact.
China had previously been the region most responsible for bitcoin mining making up half of the entire market, and with the country recently committed to cracking down on the ability to mine and use Bitcoin this has been a huge catalyst for change – whilst some of the reason for change had been environmental concerns, not all signs point toward that same target, and the recent ban of a few social media accounts dedicated to crypto it is certainly having an impact as the price has continued to fall somewhat.
The question that many ask, however, is whether or not it really is bad for the environment – the argument that it is points to the fact that a huge number of mining rigs and the energy they consume, for things like NFT’s it was considered that simply minting one could use as much energy as average EU resident would in a few days to a few weeks, however there’s no concrete evidence that this is the case and more research needs to be done in order to determine just how big the impact is. The cut to the Chinese mining efforts will certainly have an impact, but as Bitcoin mining accounts for the top 30 electricity consumers worldwide and not accounting for other coins too, this is a huge amount of energy being used, and as prices continue to increase encouraging more to get involved, it would only become a growing problem.