Recently this question has been brought to my attention by a friend of mine and it honestly stumped me before he told me the reason why he brought it up. Recently several very wealthy people have made comments about institutional ownership wanting "clean" bitcoin and not emission belching, environmental catastrophe bitcoin. While it sounds good on the surface the actual mechanisms themselves make it a lot harder to actually achieve.
One of the biggest things is that a TON of bitcoins have already been mined. Does this mean those bitcoins previously mined are not as valuable as the newer ones? Are early adaptors then punished because of the way these coins were mined? While no answer is readily available and it is interesting to think about only time will tell how it shakes out.
It reminds me of how Bitcoin currently is in South Korea though. If you did not know due to capital controls in South Korea they pay a much higher premium for their Bitcoin and this year have actually already touched $70,000 a coin. If these greener Bitcoins become a more important thing and due to blockchain verification you could find out all the data about it if you wanted to could a separation in price occur? Would it be that green Bitcoins are of premium value and thus people would pay more for them?
I could argue both sides of this being both for and against it and I am not sure which side I am really on. The idea though is very very interesting to me and it could play a much larger role in the future of Bitcoin. I do not see this causing a fork or anything but I do see the possibility of Bitcoin having two different prices depending on how it was mined and also what its history has been. It would make sense that a 2012 mined Bitcoin could possibly become green on if the transactions it goes through are powered by green energy!
This is definitely something to keep an eye on and see if exchanges start hashing out a green Bitcoin idea. Corporations are huge in green things right now so you really could raise the price and make them overpay if you can back it up.
