Chia digital currency "farming" as residual income stream potential

So I just learned about a new digital currency coin or token called "Chia" that might allow you to bring some permaculture values to your life by way of computers and the new money craziness.  Link to the pertinent info here - Chia FAQ.  From what I understand, it is form of currency that is less resource intensive than say Bitcoin.  Bitcoin transactions themselves are relatively low cost in energy, likely similar to credit card transactions (thanks to what I learned from one of Paul Wheaton's recent podcast episodes -- sorry can't recall which one), but the mining of the currency uses a ton of energy.  This is mainly to keep the systems cool, as people use graphics cards and computers to "mine" it.  I had a co-worker who does this and told me about the massive electric bill, but I'm sure he's a millionaire by now.    

Anyway, I thought it might be a potential passive income stream.  If you have extra server or personal computer hard drive disk space that you're not using, and you're running that computer anyway for other purposes, you can stack functions and farm some chia.  I don't know how much technical expertise it will require to get going, but I'm going to give it a whirl.  I'll report back to this thread about the experience.  Does anyone else have experience with this?

The proof of space and time method has been around since at least 2017 this is nothing new and I never heard of anyone becoming millionaires off of other currencies using that method. To me, this just seems like another wannabe token that probably won't gain much traction. Unless the company that invented that method rebranded for some reason if chia is claiming they invented the method I would just stay away.

Ok, it's definitely new to me.  I didn't expect that many people would get rich "mining" or "farming" but it sure seems like those who got into Bitcoin early are doing pretty well right now...if they cash out while it's hot.  It's an interesting way to earn something from disk space just sitting out there.  However, the more I learn, it would probably require many Terabytes of data to really get things going.  Thanks for the info!

So I just learned that this kind of intensive use of SSD drives can destroy them after a few months. So it seems that it might not be such a great idea after all. I applaud the effort to try to reduce energy consumption in digital currency, but that seems like a high cost. I think I’ll pass on this for now. I was hopeful it would be an interesting passive income strategy for some people or orgs, but maybe not. Try a hundred things, maybe one will work out, right?