What is the benefit of having FIPS hardware-level encryption on a USB stick?
Many people assume that if they're seeing something that's more expensive than they're used to that they're being ripped off for some reason. Ripping people off with high prices is actually very rare nowadays, mostly thanks to the big online marketplaces.<p>These large price differentials are purely due to the insane economies of scale we're able to create. It's not a wonder that there's a 128GB USB stick as expensive as $1675, it's a wonder there's a 128GB USB stick as cheap as $27.<p>Imagine it took 1 million dollars to develop the tech and implement the manufacturing process of a 128GB stick. Assume they cost $5 to manufacture, and $20 to market and ship. Then when you sell a million you've recuperated your R&D and made a million profit that warrants the 6 million upfront investment you had to do.<p>Same story but now with the expensive 128GB sticks, of which you're only going to sell 1000. Even though the stick is 1675, you only make 1.650.000, so your effective budget to develop the fancy encryption scheme and make a profit is 650.000.