As the cryptocurrency industry started expanding, it managed to offer more and more products to users. With the passage of time, the industry has gained enormous adoption in the mainstream industry. However, when the cryptocurrency industry started, no cryptocurrency exchanges were in existence.
The first cryptocurrency exchange that came into being was in the year 2011. That was the time when users found access to multiple methods of acquiring cryptocurrencies. Before that, the only way for investors to acquire cryptocurrencies was to mine them.
Initially, it was not that difficult to mine cryptocurrencies but with the passage of time, it became difficult to mine them due to crypto-halving. As the cryptocurrency industry has continued growing, the mining sector has become more and more expensive.
Therefore, the cryptocurrency mining sectors have started investing more money into acquiring heavy equipment. At present, it is all about mining farms having more hashrate, which is only achievable through expensive cryptocurrency mining rigs.
Therefore, it has become a race among all cryptocurrency mining firms to mine the most amount of cryptocurrencies.
As the cryptocurrency industry started gaining mainstream adoption, the cryptocurrency industry faced a problem that it did not see coming. As the cryptocurrency mining industry continued growing, it started consuming more electricity.
Therefore, the majority of the countries resorted to using cheap resources for power generation in order to carry out cryptocurrency mining. What the firms did not realize that they would be mining cryptocurrencies at the cost of causing harm to the environment.
Eventually, the firms ended up increasing the carbon emission all over the world. As mainstream institutions started adopting cryptocurrencies, they showed their concerns over the mining of cryptocurrencies.
Since the start of 2021, many mainstream institutions have started rejecting cryptocurrencies mined through carbon-emitting power generation. Some of the major examples of such institutions are Tesla and Square. Both firms announced they would no longer deal in Bitcoin (BTC) mined through carbon-emitting sources.
Just recently, a major cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX has made a huge announcement for its users. The announcement not only targets its own community but also the entire cryptocurrency community.
The firm has announced that it would no longer deal in cryptocurrencies that are acquired through electricity, generated from high carbon-emitting sources. BitMEX is a famous trading platform that deals mainly in cryptocurrency derivatives.
The firm had recently faced a lot of backlash from the mainstream industry for its adoption of cryptocurrencies such as BTC that have a high carbon footprint.
The firm made the announcement on May 21, 2021, that it will stop dealing in cryptocurrencies and derivatives acquired through high carbon footprint sources.
The exchange officials stated that it is a responsibility for them to care about the environment and no deal in products acquired through high carbon-emitting resources.
