It isn’t to create cheap or decentralized storage. This already exists.
It isn’t to create an energy free, resource free, perfect currency. This will never exist.
It is to create a better cryptocurrency.
What do you think the purpose of Chia is and is not?
Define better. Also, better than what?
They’ve talked a bit about the future of the company POST IPO and it sounded to me very much like a cloud-services/cloud-capacity play.
I think that’s the entire reason that:
As near as I can tell, the purpose of Chia is to make me learn more powershell and remember some python.
Beyond that, I am not sure it has a purpose.
Have you seen any refs to this? I’ve been looking and can’t find any reference to actually storing anything useful on all this space…
don’t forget the occasional mini heart attack, they are fun too… lol
Love ya BRO! 
but you’re just plain wrong on this one!
TLDR: nope, not a storage medium!
Bram has stated explicitly on NUMEROUS occasions that the consumer storage play is bunk and Chia has no interest in it. That’s exactly what filecoin is attempting and failing. Bram actually built this exact storage product called “mojo-nation” some 10 20 years ago.(Len Sassaman and Satoshi: a Cypherpunk history | Medium) The premise is fundamentally flawed. The average user wants to access their data on demand not store it and retrieve it at some point “later.” The “block-chain” is not the answer to all 1st world problems despite what many “crypto technologists” expose on the daily. It has it’s strengths and weaknesses and it makes a TERRIBLE storage medium.
I think it is to add fuel the the fire of shortage and use it as a tool to build value into Chia - then “cha-ching!” cash out…seems like the real business during the age of corona, harness the power of shortage…shipping co., lumber, gfx cards, and with the chia protocol - the harddrive…
No thats not the purpose. Thats the effect of tying chia to storage media. And the shortage is due to people FOMOing into Chia cause its grand opening price when it hit exchanges. It if would have opened at 1 $ per XCH (I realistically expected max 1-10$ per XCH upon launch), we would be nowhere near we are now netspace wise. The general over-hyping of crypto nowadays also did its part.
The ultimate idea was to create a a cryptocurrency, just like bitcoin, that is more safe and wastes less energy. That would be the case if people would only leverage spare storage. But we all went crazy scalping drives and NVMes. So we opted to buy farming gear at scale, cause we thought if we dont do, we miss probably the next Bitcoin. Until it turned out, that if everbody is doing that, noone will see a return on their investment anytime soon if ever.
At some point (which I think we passed already), its not profitable to buy hardware just for the sake of farming. Only big plays with huge spare capacity laying around will be able to farm profitable. And who are those? Yep, the hyperscalers, outsourcing providers and other datacenter operators.
So the implication being, when supply chain stabilises, the value of XCH should come down?
Oh damn I stand corrected! Ok that’s totally fair, I have no listened to hours of interviews with him yet so haven’t gotten that info.
Thanks for the correction!
I just used the Chia calculator last night to see what it would take to make decent $/month ($10k or so) and it was basically a 1PB build @ $30k
So you are painfully right here… 
And the thing is, to make consistent profits, you need to keep up with the netspace. At this point in time thats not really possible. If you don‘t keep up, your investment becomes worth less and less, as the netspace grows and you get less rewards.
This physically gives me stomach pain (you are right of course)… $10k into a mining build that would have netted $40k/month 6 weeks ago when I started this process and now (today) is on track to net $4k/mo… I’m sure by the time I actually fill these drives I’m going to be at the $1k or less a month.
Painful lesson.
Same. If i’d started a week or two earlier, than I actually started plotting, things would look way different XCH wise in my wallet. I started around mainnet launch and still thought I’m rather an early one. Turned out I was not.
I think the idea is more like ETH, a blockchain application platform (based on ChiaLisp), not a Bitcoin like virtual asset class. The ‘green’ aspect is IMHO just marketing because as with every organized race to the bottom game it is waste as much resources as you possibly can to outrun the competition for more stake in the revenue faucet, this time with an extra physical residue of storage filled with nonsense.
While trying to find some configuration settings for mdadm this morning, I ran across a 2018 Toms article on Chia farming… like you, I thought the craze for this started months ago and we were all on the cusp - not so
Folks, we have a winner! @vandy
"Chia has a new innovative Nakamoto consensus algorithm that removes the energy demands of Proof of Work from the system. Compared to other cryptocurrencies, Chia has significantly better security due to its more decentralized blockchain. Chialisp is Chia’s new smart transaction programming language that is powerful, easy to audit, and secure and will unlock the security, transparency, and ease of use that cryptocurrencies promise. Chia is also adopting more modern cryptographic tools to enable richer smart transaction capabilities. Chia is taking a new and superior approach to funding, building, and supporting a blockchain via an eventually public, for-profit, open source development company that holds a pre-farm. Chia will use its pre-farm (Strategic Reserve) to ease the volatility of the coin to mitigate bubbles and crashes and to drive adoption of chia.
Source: Frequently Asked Questions - Chia Network (shared by @vandy)
