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If you were pissed off about the worldwide GPU shortage was bad, then we might be in for some trying times when it comes to HDDs and SSDs as Chinese crypto miners are buying them up in bulk to mine cryptocurrency on them.
Chia is the cryptocurrency that the Chinese miners are digging into right now, which doesn’t use a CPU, GPU, or ASIC — it uses your hard drive or SSD. Chia uses a proof of space and time model, versus the proof of work model that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are mined through.
Chia was created by BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen, with the idea behind Chia being that HDDs and SSDs use less power — so mining on them is much cheaper (as the HDD and SSDs are cheaper than CPUs and GPUs for the most part, and they use far, far less power and output even less heat).
Chinese crypto miners are now purchasing HDDs and SSDs in bulk, with capacities anywhere between 4TB and 18TB being scooped up big time. HDD and SSD pricing is now spiking in China, as well as HDDs and SSDs becoming much harder to buy with everyday that passes.
Jiahe Jinwei is one of the largest domestic manufacturers in China, and when speaking with MyDrivers the company said that their 1TB and 2TB high-performance NVMe SSDs are completely sold out. The company has now had to resort to stopping crypto miners from securing all of their consumer-focused SSDs — also forcing the company to boost production in order to meet demand — as well as a tease that Jiahe Jinwei is now making a crypto mining friendly SSD… uhhh.
I guess we’ll be reading about HDDs and SSDs costing 2-3x more or something insane in the next 6-9 months… hopefully not.
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