The mining craze brought about by a surge in interest in the Chia cryptocurrency is driving prices up for large-capacity hard drives in Vietnam, with local buyers investing in large quantities.
A report by Retail News Asia says domestic buyers are purchasing large-capacity hard drives in Hanoi and then reselling them to mainland China to fuel demand for Chia mining, resulting in supplies of hard drives falling to nearly zero. Data storage company Seagate Vietnam’s Hoang Lam says his company has been out of 4TB hard drives since March because “many of our customers bought the hard drives in bulk, from hundreds to thousands in one order, instead of a few units in one order as usual,” the outlet reports.
Online group chats in the region are also said to be abuzz with buyers commenting that they’re now opting to buy smaller drives, and combining them, as they cannot find any suppliers for hard drives 6TB or larger.
A separate report by Coinspeaker cited Onda, a hardware and motherboard manufacturer based in China, as announcing plans to roll out a new motherboard dedicated to Chia cryptocurrency mining. The new motherboard is in response to the shortage of SSD (solid-state drives) and HDDs (hard disk drives) in the market, the report added.
Mining activities in China saw a resurgence after the launch of Chia’s Mainnet last
month.”