Over the last 24 hours the price of Chia has crashed dramatically. Thanks to ChiaExplorer.com we can see how the price of XCH has taken a veritable nose dive after an otherwise relatively stable week. Those farmers that sold their XCH this week are likely breathing a sigh of relief while those of us still holding are looking at a rocky road ahead. There is no indication that the price has stopped falling and no indication why XCH has fallen off a cliff today in particular.
We will be keeping a close eye on this, as if it falls enough we are going to start approaching the realm of “unprofitable to even maintain” for large datacenter operations. When Proof of Work mining this is fairly common, and the remedy is to simply shut your miners off. With Chia, the cost is already sunk and the problem is space instead of power so it does not make sense to turn it off and on again as the price fluctuates. Those drives that are purchased and online will keep getting filled and farmed, but I suspect this crash will dampen the rapid netspace rise.
For a small time at least.