In some cases, the miner of the crypto asset 'Chia' that caused the shortage of HDDs and SSDs tossed used hard drives and resold them as new.

Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, the crypto asset ' Chia ' does not require an expensive graphics card (GPU) for mining, but instead uses a hard drive such as an HDD or SSD. Therefore, miners who turned their eyes to Chia purchased a large amount of HDDs and SSDs, but it is reported that the fall in the price of Chia has caused a fire sale of used hard drives this time.

Chia crypto miners sell hardware at a loss --VnExpress International
https://e.vnexpress.net/news/business/economy/chia-crypto-miners-sell-hardware-at-a-loss-4349202.html

Chia Coin Miners Are Reselling Used SSDs as New | Tom's Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/used-chia-ssds-resold

Since mining crypto assets consumes a large amount of electricity, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also said that 'Bitcoin has a bad influence on the earth', and the impact on the environment due to crypto asset transactions is regarded as a problem. It has been. On the other hand, Chia is a crypto asset developed in consideration of the environment, and consumes less power than conventional Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Since Chia mining needs to provide storage capacity for the entire network rather than computing resources using GPUs, members of the Chia community have secured a large amount of large HDDs and SSDs. As a result, it has been reported that 16TB and 18TB large-capacity HDDs and SSDs have run out of stock in countries around the world, including Japan.

HDD / SSD is in short supply due to demand for mining crypto assets --GIGAZINE

Chia got off to a good start when it was first released in May 2021, and at one point it exceeded $ 1,600 per Chia (about 176,000 yen), but after that the price plummeted and at the time of writing the article per Chia It is about 254 dollars (about 28,000 yen).

Chia XCH Online Price Chart. XCH market capitalization, trading volume and other real-time crypto market data and previous data. 2021 Forecast by Chia | COINCOST
https://coincost.net/ja/currency/chia

According to Vietnam's online media VnExpress, some investors who have started mining Chia have already given up on Chia and are trying to move to another crypto asset. Hoang Trung, who runs the Facebook group of Chia traders, pointed out that there are more posts promoting the sale of hard drives that are no longer in use within the group, 'Investors sell hardware in the red due to price fluctuations in Chia. We are driven to do so, and sellers outnumber buyers. '

'I'm selling the hardware I bought three months ago in the red,' said Quang Thuan, a Chia miner. Mr. Thuan bought an HDD for mining in May when the price of Chia soared, but since the price of Chia dropped suddenly after that, he said that he was looking for a place to sell the HDD to switch to mining another crypto asset. That thing. At the time of purchase by Mr. Thuan, the 6TB HDD was 6.5 million dong (about 31,400 yen), but at the time of writing the article, it seems that there is no buyer even at 2.5 million dong (about 12,000 yen).

Another problem is that Chia mining requires a large amount of writing to the hard drive, so SSDs with a limited number of writes are extremely exhausted. For normal use, a 1TB SSD can be used for nearly 10 years, but Chia mining will reach the end of its life in just about 80 days, so it is difficult to sell the hard drive that was once used for Chia mining. matter.

Chia Crypto Plotting Can Destroy an SSD in Weeks | Tom's Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/chia-crypto-farming-can-destroy-ssds

Nguyen Sinh, a spokeswoman for HCMC, a computer service company in Ho Chi Minh City, said, 'Most of the hard drives used for Chia mining are used for security cameras or sold to gamers if the price is low. '.

However, some individuals collectively purchase the hard drive used for Chia mining and sell it as 'new' to Japan and China. News site Tom's Hardware pointed out that it's only a matter of time before the exhausted hardware used for Chia mining hits the Chinese market and could be sold to other countries.