What is Chiacoin (XCH)?

Chiacoin (XCH) is the cryptocurrency, while the Chia network is the blockchain on which it operates. It was created in May of 2021, by Bram Cohen. Cohen is the creator of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing system.

Chia is farmed, not mined. (This gives the impression of agriculture, rather than industry that is environmentally harmful.) Cryptocurrencies that rely on proof-of-work (POW) to make them available have a reputation for being environmentally harmful. Chia is intended to address/mitigate that, by doing more than just adding marketing spin through clever semantics.

Farming vs Pharming vs Mining

Pharming is the practice of directing users to fraudulent imitation sites, stealing their details and using them for financial gain (in a similar way to phishing). Crypto farming is different.

According to Cohen, mining through PoW is not efficient, resulting in massive energy consumption. This is not ecologically friendly or sustainable and puts further strain on an already threatened planet. Chia is supposedly different, using an algorithm/methodology termed "Proof of Space and Time" (PoST). The implementation relies not on computing complex hashes, but makes use of hard drive (HD) storage space on the farmers' computers. The more space farmers make available to the Chia network, the more Chiacoins they earn. This approach uses less electricity, since doing a free space check is less computationally complex and doesn't happen as often as calculating a hash. This approach is the basis of the claim that PoST (and therefore Chia) is more environmentally friendly than Bitcoin and other PoW cryptocurrencies.

Since you don't need a fast or powerful PC (CPU/GPU) to farm Chia (provided you've got plenty of free space), the initial cost of entry (ICE) into farming is also lower than for Bitcoin, Monero and/or Raptoreum. According to currency.com, the minimum requirements are as follows:

• Quad-core or better CPU (not essential).
• 2GB+ of RAM. (DDR3 is probably fine.)
• 360+ GB of free HD space. (These days, you can pick up a 2TB+ drive for a reasonable price.)
• The Chia farming software (which is apparently very user-friendly to anyone who knows enough to be able to use the Internet).

Obviously, the more powerful and efficient your computer is (check the rating of your power supply as one of the factors), the better for mining Chia.

If you've got an old, disused computer or two lying around, why not cannibalise one and beef up the other's storage, setting it up to farm Chia? As with mining BTC, the more Chia is farmed, the more becomes available.

Chia's codebase is in ChiaLISP, a dialect of LISP. If you're familiar with LISP, learning Chia shouldn't be much of a stretch. ChiaCoin Land offers tutorials on topics including ChiaLISP, farming and minting NFTs.

Cons

Hard drives, however, are made of metals and other materials that are mined from the earth. Their production definitely has a negative impact on the environment. Rather than splash out for a new drive or two (and put strain on the market in much the same way Bitcoin negatively impacted the one for GPUs), try to reuse old drives if you've got them lying around, like I do. Western Digital (a leading manufacturer of drives) saw an increased demand for its products in 2021, resulting in a shortage in Asian markets and driving the price up by as much as $300.

It is recommended to not use solid-state drives (SSDs) for this, as farming can wear them out remarkably quickly (in under three months for larger ones). Buying (and disposing of) four or more drives a year (as opposed to one every five to ten years) definitely doesn't strike me as environmentally friendly.

Something else of which you should be aware is that many Internet hosting companies (particularly for cloud storage and remote compute instances), prohibit farming Chia on their servers (and will ban you if you use them for that). The German provider Hetzner (trading as XNeelo in other countries) claims that farming puts too heavy a load on their drives and causes them to fail.

Okay, but why should I care?

The mission of Chia is to be an environmentally-friendly cryptocurrency. Chia got some attention in 2021 when Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, announced that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin (BTC) due to the negative impact that crypto mining has on the environment.

According to the project's Website, Chia ...

• Is focused on carbon markets.
• Is carbon-friendly, supporting the Paris Agreement (something to do with the climate change crisis) and is the blockchain of choice for carbon registries.
• Provides a more sustainable/environment-friendly standard for NFTs
• Is built on trust. It claims to be "a blockchain for real-world use".

DigitalCoinPrice predicts that Chia will reach a price of $2,727.05 in a few years' time and $3,593.51 in 2028. As always, predictions of future prices should be treated with caution (especially in volatile markets where unforeseen consequences and changes can have a major impact).

If you're looking to Chia for its potential to make you rich, you're missing the point, though (as with all cryptocurrencies). If you care about the environmental impact of your crypto activity (particularly minimising it), Chia might be for you. As always, DYOR. There is no guarantee that Chia won't fail, fall into disuse or drop to zero.

How/Where Do I Buy Chiacoin?

Chia can be bought on gate.io and/or Stably. In order to acquire it, you will need either Bitcoin (BTC), Stably USD (USDS) or Tether (TUSD) to exchange for it.

The Chia wallet can be downloaded from chia.net.

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