Chia is a new Chinese cryptocurrency that is mined on hard drives (works on proof-of-space, not proof-of-work). In terms of resource requirements, it grows faster than ether and much faster than bitcoin.
Just a month ago on Habré they talked about the fact that in the future it could cause a shortage of hard drives.
And now it has come!
The last time under the distribution fell video. This time - SSD and HDD (both internal and external). Prices for popular hard drives used to mine the coin have grown 2.5 times. And the volume of sales - 4-10 times. A detailed analysis of each of the marketplaces on Habré can be found here .
For those who do not mine or sell, this is only a minus. What if you wanted to buy a hard drive?
There is a free life hack.
Like last time, there is no such madness in the United States. The market is too big, miners don't make the weather. While hard drives in China and Russia are more than 2 times more expensive, prices in the US remain unchanged. For example:
Seagate SkyHawk 4 TB: . — 16199 ($218), Amazon — $110. , . Chia .
Western Digital WD40EFZX 4 TB: — 20889 ($282), Amazon — $99. Newegg . .
Seagate Exos X16 16 TB: — 89990 ($1216), B&H — $519. $12. , , , $150 .
Actually, this is how we noticed that something was happening - the number of orders for hard drives from somewhere began to grow sharply. Already several hundred people a week, although they usually buy mainly clothes and children's toys.
The Chia situation could last for months or even years. The cryptocurrency appeared back in 2017, and recently appeared on CoinGecko, in cryptocurrency indices and various cryptocurrency exchanges.
But if you know that the world is not limited to one Yandex.Market, there are much fewer reasons for grief.