The Chia cryptocurrency mining craze has been causing major shortages when it comes to hard drives and solid state drives. Because of such demand a limited stock prices are starting to rise as well. To keep up with the demand both Western Digital and Seagate are increasing production of their high capacity hard drive models by increasing utilization rate on their exiting product lines.
With no plans for new factories in the immediate future and bulk contracts that cover 50-70% of total production both companies have limited options to increase production. It looks like both Seagate and Western Digital will do what they can do increase production while monitoring the situation before deciding on future expansion plans. Back in April the global storage allocated to Chia mining was at 1 Exabyte, it has recently surpassed 20 Exabytes with no signs of slowing down.
