Chia's design philosophy is the overall best in my opinion. Actually trying to make a useful cryptocurrency rather than just pure speculative vehicle of other shitcoins.

People have nothing better to do with their money and want to get returns from unproductive pseudo-ponzi schemes because they see other people doing it.

90% of it is just hype be from intensive marketing riding on the tail of the de-fi fad. Though compared to other "storage" coins it's backed by people with good track record and they have consistently worked with institutional investors to get an IPO/ETF so any loss of value down the road would be socialized and you would not be holding the bags alone.

It's never about da tech or mah decentralisacion, just some maaaad gainz that may and may not happen.

The answer to “why now” is that they turned on their mainnet in March, so the farming for real coins began then. It got some press, at least in crypto land, and it’s very accessible to start small scale plotting by yourself. Everyone has spare disk space.

The ability to trade coins (but not necessarily their listing on exchanges) will begin in a matter of days.

https://news.bitcoin.com/bittorrent-creator-bram-cohens-cryp...

Regarding China... crypto speculation is popular there? Big mining pools want to own something that could potentially become big? Unclear.