Difference between $1 and $.10 is always irrelevant unless you're mass manufacturing, which I presume you aren't on a remote island. Plus, arm cortex-m0+ cores

Difference between $1 and $.10 is always irrelevant unless you're mass manufacturing, which I presume you aren't on a remote island. Plus, arm cortex-m0+ cores aren't $1, they are also available in $.15-$.30 range. Westeners like to buy the $.10 CH32V003 as an exercise in minimalism, after all its refreshing to work in an environment with very limited resources. For the same reason people enjoy 1KB demoscene categories. There's no economics behind it. Authors argument almost entirely leans on Aliexpress shipping things for "free" to his island. It also has arm cores, but I suppose RISC-V MCUs have smaller odds of being fakes/clones.