[woah]

The tradeoff is very simple: spend $100 on electricity, or spend $100 manufacturing storage chips? Chia miners can't just decide not to spend the $100 buying more storage, because if they don't, someone else will, pushing up the storage requirement, and reducing their income.

[codsane]

I'm familiar with the economics of mining, I don't know why it is thought that Chia was supposed to change that.

Their initiative is a GPU mining alternative which utilizes less power. The point of my comment was to emphasize that they have achieved exactly that.