Cryptocurrency Chia threatens the stock of SSDs and hard drives

With the rise of the Chia cryptocurrency, miners in China are hoarding hard drives and SSDs. It is because the Chia cryptocurrency is mined with storage space.

The cryptocurrency Chia uses a proof-of-space and proof-of-time model and is presented as a greener alternative to Ethereum and Bitcoin . Its creator, Bram Cohen, designed it to take advantage of unused storage space, based on the fact that hard drives and SSDs consume less energy, are easier to obtain, and cheaper to buy. Large-scale mining of Chia contributes to lower energy costs, but now storage units are facing shortages.

Now the lack of stock can affect hard drives and SSD

According to the HKEPC report, miners are massively purchasing hard drives ranging from 4 TB to 18 TB in capacity. This can easily lead to a hard drive shortage and price hikes as is the case with graphics cards. Due to the constant read and write operations, consumer SSDs are not the first choice for mining Chia cryptocurrency, but it works for miners for their farms.

Chinese manufacturer Jiahe Jinweidijo commented that its Gloway and Asgard 2TB and 1TB high-performance NVMe M.2 SSDs are sold out. Faced with its use by miners, they plan to establish restrictions to prevent them from buying huge amounts of SSDs for consumers and will increase production to meet demand. Like NVIDIA with its CMPs, they will make a series of SSDs specifically made to mine Chia, which would be SSDs with greater resistance, capacity and performance, like the SSDs that data centers use.

It should be said that the Chia coin is not yet officially available for trade. But seeing as it needs storage space and is more technologically efficient, it is likely to become a viable alternative as soon as interest is generated and is available in the cryptocurrency market.

Source: Tom's Hardware