In an article on vNexpress a number of Facebook farmers are shows to be trying to sell of their farms. This is a phenomenon I have been seeing recently while trying, kind of, to promote the Chia Plot Facebook page. This article comes to us via a Protos.com article that I am quoted in.
First, I stand by what I said about the Chia community. The hype is over, the price is dropping and I don’t see a lot of new farmers convinced to join with the price so low. I think most of the money floating around the ecosystem comes to us via venture capitalists, and there isn’t really any revenue in the system yet. I hope that changes with the Chia Cultivation Grant and hackathon and that VC money kicks the ecosystem into high gear, but there is no guarantee it happens.
But the points about premature hard drive deaths are unfortunately repeating an oft-confused report about SSDs dying and the massive amount of storage needed for farming. In a nutshell, SSDs are used for plotting and when done incorrectly can definitely wear through them pretty quickly. One has even died on me after under 1000 plots. But hard drives aren’t being abused by Chia, unless simply being turned on is abuse.
The part it gets sort of right though is actually two separate problems, people selling almost burned out SSDs as “gently used” and farmers wholesale selling of their farms. The first issue is just malicious. It probably isn’t happening to any great degree, but it absolutely will and people will get screwed over. That sucks, but its kind of true of all used storage purchases. I always recommend against purchasing used storage of any kind.
As to farmers selling off their rigs wholesale. This is definitely happening, I have seen plenty of ads. And they definitely sit there for awhile. But I think this problem is likely more complicated than just farmers having to sell underwater. People bought during a scarcity rush and now are trying to sell when it is over. I’m sure some of them even made money in between and are now trying to recoup as much as possible. Because netspace is still growing, albeit slower than it used to and so I don’t think a lot of farmers are packing it in. But people aren’t certainly aren’t buying up prebuilt farms clamoring to get in like they do with Ethereum rigs.
But we do need utility. We need the price to stop crashing. Otherwise it won’t matter if the technology is better or not, no one will use Chia and the idea will die. That seems to be happening though. Things are still young, and there is plenty on the horizon. Sirius labs is saying 250 teams have signed up for their hackathon. That seems incredible to me, but if true means that Chia’s best days are still ahead of it – despite what the price charts say.
Every successful crypto coin needs a whale to enter, no whale on this planet will invest in a coin that has been pre-mined to this degree. Even the Coin Bureau gave the thumbs down on Chia in their YouTube “TOP 5 RICHEST Crypto Projects!!” and there are a lot of people who listen to that guy. I’ve been told by several people that the “misinformation” on drive damage is not due to ignorance, it is true crypto believers taking shots at a “corporate pre-mine” coin that goes against the “Satoshi ” way of things. There are Bram fans for Chia, but there is a huge and influential crypto base that want Chia to fail. I plot and farm, have 2,000+ plots, but do it for fun because I love Threadripper Pros, P620 Thinkstations, and fast Aorous Gen 4 AIC adaptors, not to make money, it will never make money, I have Eth for that.