Hard Drive Mining Incoming...

Renoaku

Price is about to go up on Hard Drives now?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ4ea5NNqcg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSxAC4189-c

Quizzical

It's not hard to come up with an algorithm where more storage space helps a lot.  Looking for collisions in a hash function is a simple example.  But in the obvious examples, mining speed goes up faster than linearly in the amount of hardware you have.  For example, someone with double the hardware might get four times the mining speed.  That's unwise in a mining algorithm, as it makes it much easier to launch a 51% attack that takes over the entire system.  I haven't had a look at the precise algorithms involved, so hopefully they've avoided that obvious pitfall.

But whether or not this drives very many hard drive sales depends tremendously on the prices of the coins that use it for mining.  If buying a ton of hard drives lets you mine coins that are worth far less than the hard drives, people won't bother.