The semiconductor industry is experiencing one of the most scarce periods in history, with a lack of stock in graphics cards and many other semiconductors that affect industries such as the automobile industry. The new cryptocurrency boom has a lot to do with it, triggering its price and forcing many people to have to declare cryptocurrencies in Income 2020. Now the shortage could reach other hardware devices if a new cryptocurrency triumphs.
We talk about ChiaCoin . As they point out from China, this incipient cryptocurrency is triggering purchases of hard drives and SSD units , since it is mined with physical storage. This differentiates it from other current currencies, which are mined using graphics cards, processors or ASICs, integrated circuits with specific applications that are much more efficient to mine, for example, Bitcoin.
ChiaCoin: less energy consumption
Bitcoin uses the concept of ” proof of work “, where the user receives cryptocurrencies in exchange for a job, which is to offer the computing power of a device. With Chia, a concept of proof of space and time is used . Its creators want, in this way, that cryptocurrencies have a much lower environmental effect, since the storage units are cheaper and consume much less energy .
Chia mining with storage requires not only a lot of space, but also a lot of read and write operations. This seriously affects the durability of SSDs, hence the SSDs that are most in demand are the high-end ones with TLC and MLC memories , including those destined for data centers. Due to their excellent durability, high-capacity hard drives are also being used for data centers, using helium and technologies such as SMR.
An SSD manufacturer sees its drives out of stock
The units that are being demanded the most in both cases range from 4 TB to 18 TB . In Hong Kong, the price of storage units is rising between 22 and 64 euros. A large Chinese SSD manufacturer, Jiahe Jinwei, claims that they are out of stock of their high-performance Gloway and Asgard series, where the 1 and 2 TB NVMe SSD drives are out of stock.
To fix this, the company is blocking large mass purchases, as well as increasing its production. At the same time, they are developing SSD units aimed directly at this type of mining, which offer greater durability. With this, they hope that the demand will not affect the cheapest units destined for the consumer segment.
If Chia Coin succeeds, we may see a storage shortage that can have dire consequences for the market. Data centers and cloud services need large amounts of storage units, so there may be a shortage for both large companies and individuals, as there will be users who buy cheap SSDs believing that they will be able to make a profit with ChiaCoin to even though its durability is very limited.
At the moment, ChiaCoin is not public and cannot be bought or sold, but users are already preparing for its arrival.
