Seems like Andreessen Horowitz, among others, are investors. I bet they know how to market things.

Even stuff like this post could be PR. "Hey, SSD makers, would doing this void my warranty? It would, can you clearly state that in writing somewhere? Thanks!" Then you call your friend at guru3d with an interesting article tip and a link to their updated warranty, and suddenly everyone's wondering why they can't mine chia coin. Who are you to tell me I can't mine chia coin! I must mine it!

Maybe, maybe not. I'd assume that bittorrent is what has the brand name power and caused the much higher level of interest than was seen for similar currency schemes.

He turned the BitTorrent company into such a success /s