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Last week has been a heck of a week for me as going in I had three different crypto briefings/events and then the Senate Agriculture Committee was having their hearing about their crypto bill. Well boy, everything was really spun on its head when the Biden Admin dropped its crypto report. Due to my Committee's jurisdiction, I was caught off guard as we normally get a heads up about this type of stuff a few hours at least before they are released so we will be able to ask questions to either the agencies or the administration itself and get clarification on things that our members could ask.
Friday, in a surprise move by the Majority, Congress was out of session. Thursday morning we all received an email informing us that the final votes of the week were going to be that afternoon with Congress reconvening the following Monday. While the reasons for this were not made clear by the Majority it is assumed that it was in some part done due to the upcoming funding issue. Congress, both the House and the Senate, need to pass either a Fiscal Year 2023 bill or a continuing resolution, also known as a CR, by the end of next week. If you did not know the Federal Governments Fiscal Year runs until the end of September with the FY 2023 budget starting October 1st.
Since this was a Friday afternoon briefing this surprise pivot sadly did affect the number of people that signed up to attend but attendance was still pretty great given most people were off work. The briefing was hosted by the Blockchain Association is one of the few crypto/blockchain industry voices here in Washington, D.C. They are a member lead and run organization that seeks to educate and advocate for the industry to the Federal Government in D.C. For this briefing, the Blockchain Association brought in someone to present on a project that I had not heard of in a while, Gene Hoffman who was there to discuss Chia Network.
Chia Network made a big splash a while ago due to its unique Proof of Time and Space protocol and how it differs from PoW and PoS. This type of mining in my personal opinion might be one of the best ones out there due to its low power consumption and the ability to use computers that are 10+ years old instead of throwing them away. When it was announced it also helped lead to a shortage of Solid State Drives in Asia as miners rushed to get ahold of them before the mainnet even launched and this led the team to actually reach out to companies and SSD providers to create a circular economy so when they were used and done with they could be wiped, sanitized, and then used to run this network.
Chia in early August was selected by the World Bank's International Finance Corp or IFC to create and run a Carbon Offsets project. Overall 13 countries participated in this and it worked out very very well! Participation ranged from developing nations like Costa Rica and Mexico to developed nations like Japan and the UK! Additional funding has since been given to them since the power consumption is 800 times lower than PoW and as good if not better than PoS (that is still being researched and the reports they have received have said either equal to PoS or better).
When comparing it to PoS coins Chia Network does beat it out in one thing easily. Staking/Mining. See for PoS the amount that you need is often extremely high in either amount or the cost and this is done to prevent malicious actors. Chia's Proof of Time and Space allows anyone to go to their website and get started right away. Like others, they have mining pools that people can join but unlike others, they have over 300,000 independent nodes! Compared to everyone else out there the ability of Chia to be independent goes above and beyond! Even in Ukraine an active warzone they still have a couple of thousand nodes mining away!
Currently, their main focus is on this carbon offset credit system but they are still building out everything else like recently launching NFTs. Carbon credit systems have been something that has grown in popularity because the current system has a ton of flaws that do not really allow for certain offset programs to carry more weight vs the ones that just do not emit as much carbon and those get credits. Having an entity like the World Bank to select them and to then have the participation that they did was monumental and hints at future things that could be coming to the chain!
Please know I am not a financial advisor and make sure you do your own research! If you enjoyed this article and would like to support me further below are a few referral links that if you used when signing up I would appreciate it! Also, follow me on Twitter @Cje95_
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