Chia cryptocurrency miners ditch their SSDs and sell them at loss
Chia cryptocurrency miners are dumping their hard drives and solid state drives in droves as a result of the precipitous price reduction. As a result, they were forced to swallow losses and switch to alternative currencies.
Hoang Trung, administrator of a Facebook page dedicated to Chia with over 5000 followers, tells us that he has noticed a spike in posts from people selling their hard drives.
In May, Chia's price doubled to $ 1,685 USD in a week. However, it began to decline shortly afterwards. Today, it is trading at $ 215, a loss of 87 percent.
"I am selling machinery that I purchased three months ago at a loss," Quang Thuan, a miner from Chia in southern Dong Nai province of the Republic of Vietnam, explained. Thuan entered the market in May, during a period of soaring Chia prices.
Unlike other currencies that require a lot of GPU processing power, mining this coin requires a lot of storage. As a result, a hard disk with 6 terabytes of storage rose by 60% in its day.
“I have not been able to find buyers in the last three days. I may have to reduce the price in order to mine additional currencies, ”says Thuan.
Additionally, stores sell these units. Hoang Tuan, the proprietor of a computer store in Ho Chi Minh City, believes that selling hard drives is far more difficult than selling GPUs, because to the rapid deterioration of these drives caused by Chia mining. "A 1 TB SSD lasts only 80 days when mining, but up to ten years when used normally," he continued.
“The majority of these hard disks are employed in surveillance cameras. Some gamers buy them if the prices are reasonable, ”said Nguyen Sinh, a spokesman for a computer services company in Ho Chi Minh.
"Some people buy a batch, 'repair' it, and sell it domestically or export it to China," he added.
The rush to invest in Chia started in April and quickly spread to other countries like Vietnam. Mining this coin, for example, consumes less energy than mining Bitcoin or Ethereum. Indeed, it was dubbed "green" cryptocurrency.
But the outlook is not good for Chia at the moment, especially considering that her investors are going to other currencies. We will see how the price of HDDs and SSDs behaves now that the currency is no longer booming.
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Maybe I'll be able to buy HDDs for acceptable prices in a few months


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this was extremely easy to predict, at least they pay the price
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""Some people buy a batch, 'repair' it, and sell it domestically or export it to China," he added."
I assume the term "repair it" is another way of saying that they rewrite the usage data statistics somehow ?
I presume "seller refurbished" (ebay link above) means they formatted it and wiped it down with a damp cloth. Though, to be fair, that would still be more than some refurbished items I've bought from the factory seem to have had.
No idea what these people are doing, but the only way to "refurbish" drives like these for sale is to do a full wipe to one of the DoD specs (HDD) or secure erase/cryptographic erase (SSD). In the case of SSD, that's about it, with an HDD, you should run multiple passes of various diagnostic test. I used to do full surface tests and peformance tests to ensure if falls within spec for the drive - anything unexpected = something failing or about to fail. Any true "repair" of a broken drive where components get replaced is something you pay $1000s for and its done in a clean room by an expert.
Half the reselling jerks on Amazon and Ebay just delete partitions or similar - testing nothing and leaving all the old data (if you know how to get it...). They are not refurbishing and they are certainly not repairing..
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Excellent, the less people the better for me. I wont be selling anything.
But seriously this article doesn't reflect the truth, Chia software shows the total size of the mainent, and it grows 35.6EiB right now
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I presume "seller refurbished" (ebay link above) means they formatted it and wiped it down with a damp cloth. Though, to be fair, that would still be more than some refurbished items I've bought from the factory seem to have had.