I'm just curious, could I run 1.16 and would it be different from 1.16.1 apart from a few bugfixes? Is performance majorly affected? I would be doing it because why not, speedrunning mods these days aren't made for 1.16 are they?

im not qualified to speak on this, but i will say this. all of the mods are made for 1.16.1, 1.16.1 is a bit less buggy (which i guess is why people run it,) and all of the top runners use it. yes, i believe that running 1.16.0 would be pretty much the same, but it just doesn't make sense to. if you don't have a very good pc, running 1.16.1 SHOULD have a decent impact over 1.16.0 simply because all of the mods for optimized way better for 1.16.1. overall, just don't bother runner 1.16.0, unless you find some weird thing that somehow makes it faster or something