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With all recent attention being focused on energy-efficient crypto projects, Chia has taken the spotlight by netting major investments from venture capital giants.
The Chia Network, which was founded in 2017 by BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen, has secured $61 million in the latest funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Richmond Global Ventures.
According to Bloomberg, other participants included Breyer Capital, Slow Ventures, True Ventures, Cygni Capital, Naval Ravikant, Collab+Currency, and DHVC. The San Francisco-based firm was valued at about $500 million in the funding round.
Chia’s president and chief operating officer, Gene Hoffman, told the outlet that the funding was “rocket fuel” for hiring and accelerating its ambition to become a trading and payment system used by governments, banks, and other institutions. He also confirmed plans for an IPO:
“Our goal has always been to go public relatively quickly as that will significantly clarify our regulatory environment and allow customers to use currency to hedge public market volatility, which is different from other coins,”
Chia Network’s energy-efficient cryptocurrency
Bitcoin has been in the spotlight recently for all the wrong reasons. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has raised concerns about its energy consumption in his constant efforts to shill Dogecoin. The Chinese government has also been cracking down on mining operations in order to align with carbon-neutrality efforts.
Greener alternatives are the latest crypto hotcakes, and Chia is at the forefront of them all labeling itself as eco-friendly, with claims that its operations are less energy-intensive than traditional mining. As reported by BeInCrypto, the Chia Network operates off a new “smart coin” language called Chialisp.
Chia’s native XCH token has been described as “green money for a digital world.” It utilizes a unique consensus mechanism called “Proof of Space and Time” which taps into unutilized computing resources on validators’ hard drives.
The platform explained its “farming” process as expending some CPU cycles to create “plots” on hard drives. These will then utilize the energy-efficient resource of drive space over the following years to participate in the consensus mechanism that verifies new blocks on the Chia blockchain.
Hard disk price hikes
Industry observers and IT media outlets have noted that this has already resulted in an increase in demand and prices for hard drives, especially in Asia. Chia hype, coupled with the global semiconductor shortage, has driven PC hardware prices through the roof.
According to an SCMP report in late April, hard disk prices in China have begun to soar as Chia miners stockpile storage. The price of 12-terabyte drives has increased by 60% since Chia was announced in February, and most professional-quality hard drives with more than eight terabytes of storage space have sold out.
