We are still at the beginning of the chip shortage that is plaguing the tech industry and there are already news of an impending SSD shortage. Cryptocurrency miners in China are allegedly buying hard drives and SSDs for the new storage based Chia cryptocurrency.
According to a report by HKEPC, a new cryptocurrency called Chia cryptocurrency has every miner in China reportedly buying up hard drives and SSD storages. Chia cryptocurrency is different from Bitcoin where it utilizes the “available space” model rather than using processor and graphics card to make computational analysis. The report also states that participants in China are mass-purchasing high-capacity hard drives from 4TB to 18TB in size.
Chia was founded by Bram Cohen, who was the inventor of BitTorrent, whose aim is to create a more energy-efficient currency. It leverages the amount of storage space one has – the more unused storage space, a miner earns more as it is able to farm more of the currency.
Bitcoin’s boom has attributed to the lack of supply for high-end processors and graphics card and the report predicts similar issues for the storage market if the cryptocurrency takes off. This could again eventually drive cost of storage that is used in an Apple device or other device producers that uses SSD storage.
