‘Green’ bitcoin alternative Chia is leading to hard disk shortages

By Matthew Sparkes

Cryptocurrencies based on owning a large number of hard disks, rather than using computer processors, could offer a less energy-intensive alternative to bitcoin and might even make it cheaper to build data centres – though it is already leading soaring demand for hard disks that is disrupting supply chains.

Bitcoin and several other popular cryptocurrencies are created, or mined, using a concept called proof of work, which involves solving computationally difficult puzzles that consume a large amount of electricity – bitcoin’s annual electricity consumption is estimated to be 148 terawatt hours and rising, or around the same amount as Poland. Now rivals are emerging that instead make use of large amounts of empty hard disks, a concept known as proof of space.

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Because hard drives are less energy intensive to run than processors, proof of space currencies are touted as more environmentally friendly, but demand for one such currency, Chia, has become so high that some Asian countries, such as Vietnam, are reporting shortages of hard disks. The same phenomenon occurred with graphics cards, which proved to be extremely efficient at mining certain proof of work cryptocurrencies. Currently around 3 million terabytes of hard disk space are being devoted entirely to mining Chia, enough to store three billion movies.

Jason Feist at leading hard drive manufacturer Seagate says that the company is experiencing strong orders and that staff were working to “adjust to market demand”.

He also suggested that these new cryptocurrencies could provide a way for companies building large data centres to offset the cost by turning them over to mining. “Chia, and similar technologies such as Filecoin and Sia, show potential ways businesses can turn their idle infrastructure into ongoing revenue,” says Feist.

Michel Rauchs at the University of Cambridge says that while bitcoin’s proof of work approach is well understood, proof of space alternatives are still in their infancy.

“Other consensus algorithms that are less energy-intensive but also introduce some level of centralisation and subjectivity might be an acceptable trade-off. There are always trade-offs involved, most of which tend to only become known over time,” he says.

Aron Peterson, who works in digital production for the film industry in the UK, says that people in his field started to notice the price of computing hardware creeping above manufacturer listed prices around six years ago. He puts it down to demand for graphics cards by cryptocurrency miners.

“It was causing frustration among creatives and gamers who didn’t want to purchase upgrades at inflated prices just because other people were wasting huge amounts of electricity to compete for digital tokens,” he says.

He decided to try mining himself but found that it was using significant energy and predicting that it would take 5 months before mining any coins. “Obviously I wasn’t going to run this experiment for 5 months, especially if the estimated time continued to climb as new miners appeared,” he says.

Peterson is also not convinced by Chia’s green credentials, saying bitcoin miners are unlikely to switch because it would require purchasing new hardware. “Instead of displacement it’s an additional crypto to be mined,” he says.

“Aside from the energy usage, this results in mountains of electronic waste as hard drives will fail faster and more often,” says Peterson. “The poorest people in the world already live with mountains of e-waste pollution we dump on them and this is just going to add to that.”

Chia Network, the firm behind the cryptocurrency, did not respond to a request for comment.