Chinese coin miners flock to new cryptocurrency Chia resulting in hard drive shortages and price surges

Gamers have been complaining for a long time about higher prices for graphics cards due to demand from people who mine cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum but now a new cryptocurrency that can be mined using hard drive storage space is putting a similar chokehold on supplies of this critical PC component.

Unlike bitcoin, which requires massive amounts of processing power and electricity, the blockchain and transaction platform of Chia – a cryptocurrency created by Bram Cohen who is best known for developing the peer-to-peer BitTorrent protocol – uses hard drive storage capacity for its consensus mechanism. Chia has made it clear it wants to break with the past approach to mining.