By
Steve Muchoki
April 19th, 2024
Chia coin market price has jumped by approximately 30% in the past two weeks but now it is down nearly 30% in the last 24 hours.
A huge demand for high-capacity Hard Disk Drives (HDD) that are typically used by Chia network users in the Proof-of-Space and time concept, has triggered a notable shortage in the HDD supply market, according to research conducted by Tomshardware.
Reportedly, HDD market prices spiked in the United States as Chia users went in for more hardware storage to get frequent compensation for unused space. A similar case was observed with the graphic cards (GPUs) that are used in Ethereum mining.
Huge demand for storage hardware devices resulted in the market price offered by retailers like Amazon spiking since the manufacturing rate can not supply the huge market demand.
Chia Network and the HDD Market
Founded by Bram Cohen back in 2017, the Chia network seeks to improve the global financial and payments systems. The Proof-of-Space and time concept were the initial mindset of Nakamoto when he was designing Bitcoin.
The platform has grown over the years to a notable project with the potential to disrupt the payment system. However, any shortage of computer space suppliers could congest the system with unprocessed data.
On March 19, 2021, the Chia network announced the launch of its mainnet for farming rewards. Not until May 3, 2021, when the firm enabled transactions on its platform.
Consequently, the Chia coin price has jumped over 30% in the past two weeks according to CoinGecko. But now it is down nearly 30%. The asset was trading around $912 at the time of reporting according to market analytics provided by Binance-backed Coinmarketcap. There are 21,514,760 units of Chia coins in total supply, although the current circulating supply is not officially recorded on both CoinGecko and Coinmarketcap.
Chia network enthusiasts who want to capitalize on the Proof-of-Space (PoS) and time concept are stashing high-capacity hard disk drives (HDD). According to the research by Tomshardware, popular HDD models used by Chia network customers have spiked by up to $300 more expensive than they were just a few days ago.
In some instances, retailers have run out of cheap, high-capacity, and performance hard disk drives (HDD) in their stock. “The pricing of Seagate’s BarraCuda Pro 14TB (ST14000DM001) has shifted from $480 to $550 for months, but in the last few days, its price at Amazon increased to $583 – $649, a clear indicator that demand is exceeding supply. At least the HDD is in stock at some dealerships,” the report indicated.
The spike in Hard Disk Drive (HDD) was observed in various models including Toshiba, thus indicating the preference has been for high capacity storage hardware. “Toshiba’s N300 12TB (HDWG21CXZSTA, CMR, 7200 RPM) could be had for $255 in December 2020, but with the recent price hikes as a result of overwhelming demand, the HDD is now priced at $397 – $409,” the report noted.
