Can Binance Smart Chain Answer Elon Musk's Crypto-Breaking Reiterated Question of Energy Efficiency?

At the time of writing, Elon Musk’s tirades against Bitcoin are growing more frequent and seemingly less informed. The crypto sphere has been thrown into a state of disarray (more disarray than usual anyway) by Elon Musk and Tesla’s decision to suspend Bitcoin payments for their cars. 

Regardless of how irrational Musk is sounding, there is a new conversation surrounding crypto. Energy Efficiency and the effect that crypto has on the environment, are major talking points. Many different teams are now broadcasting the energy efficiency of their own cryptocurrency. We’ve seen surges in the price of NANO, for example, as a direct result of this new narrative.

But what does this mean for the Binance Smart Chain? Where does BSC stand within this new conversation? Binance Smart Chain has always been a bit of a chameleon in the crypto world. It is a crypto network. It hosts decentralized borrowing and decentralized lending pools.

However, BSC is essentially centralized. Binance CEO Changing Zhao said it best when he said that BSC hosts a sort of Centralized Decentralized Finance, or “CeDeFi” as he put it. 

This middle ground personality is something that carries over to its environmental impact too. BSC is not as environmentally friendly as NANO or XRP but neither is it anywhere close to the energy consumption of the giants of Bitcoin and Ethereum. BSC is similar to Ethereum yet the key difference is that BSC has already transitioned to a proof of stake model.

BSC’s decision to sacrifice decentralization, along with already having PoS, is what has allowed it to offer much lower fees than Ethereum. It is also, rather relevantly, what has allowed it to have such a negligible energy usage when compared to some other crypto. 

Binance Smart Chain is certainly well-positioned in this new environmentally aware climate. Until Ethereum’s long-awaited update finally goes live, BSC is the most accessible way to engage in many of the features of DeFi. Yield farming, staking, and liquidity pools are available for a much lower price than on the Ethereum network.

This means they will be accessible to the newer smaller and medium-sized investors. These newer investors, potentially becoming aware of crypto through the current eco-narrative, might well be attracted to BSC for its relatively low energy consumption. 

PancakeSwap is, by far, the most popular decentralized exchange (DEX) on the BSC network. It grants access to all of the “CeDeFi” features available on BSC on an easy-to-operate user-friendly interface. 

PancakeSwap, from its name to its interface, to its native token CAKE, can not be accused of taking itself too seriously, but by being on BSC it has now grown to hold the highest liquidity on the market. Having said that, it’s still a product of a time when all decentralized exchanges were inexplicably being named after types of food.

There’s no denying that PancakeSwap has been great for bringing people onto BSC. No doubt its light-hearted identity is great for attracting new casual investors and this is today a huge part of BSC.

On top of that though, a new DEX has arrived onto BSC. CoinSwap Space offers all the features of PancakeSwap but caters to a much more professional clientele.

With CoinSwap Space’s CSS token possessing a very low hard-cap and a totally different set of tokenomics, CoinSwap will bring more diversity to the BSC. 

The “personality” of something like a DEX can seem trivial, but it matters. Especially when you consider the rate that crypto is growing at currently. Many of the people coming into crypto now are going to be looking to invest in a platform that looks familiar to them.

That’s not to say that PancakeSwap will be replaced but having more options when shopping for places to invest is great for BSC. When you consider the costs associated with Ethereum and the difficulty it's having transitioning to 2.0, BSC is going to continue gaining users.

It’s important that BSC has a diverse range of DEXs to cater to both long-term crypto investors and much newer ones. 

BSC is not going away any time soon and the growth of the Ecosystem shows this. The service it offers is not only more cost-effective but more environmentally friendly too. In the current climate, BSC can only grow and grow.