Home
News
- A new cryptocurrency dubbed Chia is leading to a surge in demand for quality storage drives
- Chia uses proof-of-space to verify transactions,
- The price of such hard drives has increased drastically, especially in the Chinese mining regions.
- It is unclear whether there will be restrictions imposed upon miners to acquire such stuff further.
Every time a new cryptocurrency begins developing, the tech-savvy crypto miners are the first to stock up on components for their mining rigs. Chia uses a proof-of-space model to verify the transactions in the blockchain. It is a new cryptocurrency developed by BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen. However, this has led to a sudden surge in demand for hard drives and SSDs worldwide, particularly in mainland China.
Developed to combat Bitcoin mining problems
Chia was developed as an alternative to Bitcoin minus the extravagant amount of electricity required for Bitcoin mining. As a result, it also has a considerable carbon footprint. Chia tries to solve this problem using a proof-of-space model, thus eliminating the need for high-end graphics processors or ASIC chips. But as a flipside to this radical invention, storage devices are now in short supply.
All stocks sold out
Chinese e-commerce platforms Taobao and JD.com have already reported that stocks of its commercial and enterprise-grade HDDs and SSDs have been completely sold out. According to a Chinese analytics site manmanbuy.com, the average cost of a 12TB enterprise-grade HDD was just about 2,188 yuan in February. In contrast, it has now increased to more than 3,499 yuan currently. Even Seagate hard drives with 8TB storage has shown a price increase from 1,150 yuan to 2,160 yuan on Taobao. Offline vendors face the same situation as several reports of 4TB and 8TB hard drives have increased at least 60% in prices.
As Chia can be mined with hard disks with a minimum capacity of only 4TB, drives with lower capacity seem to be currently immune to the current uptick in prices. There is also no clarity as to when new stocks will arrive to replenish the demand-supply gap. However, it is uncertain as to whether vendors and authorities will begin banning the sale of equipment for mining purposes any time soon.
- A new cryptocurrency dubbed Chia is leading to a surge in demand for quality storage drives
- Chia uses proof-of-space to verify transactions,
- The price of such hard drives has increased drastically, especially in the Chinese mining regions.
- It is unclear whether there will be restrictions imposed upon miners to acquire such stuff further.
Every time a new cryptocurrency begins developing, the tech-savvy crypto miners are the first to stock up on components for their mining rigs. Chia uses a proof-of-space model to verify the transactions in the blockchain. It is a new cryptocurrency developed by BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen. However, this has led to a sudden surge in demand for hard drives and SSDs worldwide, particularly in mainland China.
Developed to combat Bitcoin mining problems
Chia was developed as an alternative to Bitcoin minus the extravagant amount of electricity required for Bitcoin mining. As a result, it also has a considerable carbon footprint. Chia tries to solve this problem using a proof-of-space model, thus eliminating the need for high-end graphics processors or ASIC chips. But as a flipside to this radical invention, storage devices are now in short supply.
All stocks sold out
Chinese e-commerce platforms Taobao and JD.com have already reported that stocks of its commercial and enterprise-grade HDDs and SSDs have been completely sold out. According to a Chinese analytics site manmanbuy.com, the average cost of a 12TB enterprise-grade HDD was just about 2,188 yuan in February. In contrast, it has now increased to more than 3,499 yuan currently. Even Seagate hard drives with 8TB storage has shown a price increase from 1,150 yuan to 2,160 yuan on Taobao. Offline vendors face the same situation as several reports of 4TB and 8TB hard drives have increased at least 60% in prices.
As Chia can be mined with hard disks with a minimum capacity of only 4TB, drives with lower capacity seem to be currently immune to the current uptick in prices. There is also no clarity as to when new stocks will arrive to replenish the demand-supply gap. However, it is uncertain as to whether vendors and authorities will begin banning the sale of equipment for mining purposes any time soon.
Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while pursuing his post-graduation major in blockchain development. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing, along with coding. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing skills, and a reliable craft at explaining the concepts such as blockchain programming, languages and token minting. He also frequently shares technical details and performance indicators of ICOs and IDOs.
