Winter Weather Shuts Down Texas Bitcoin Miners

Bitcoin mining farms in Texas went offline as a result of massive cold weather storm that drained the power grid that is state’s.

While some mining farms have actually stopped operations as a result of energy outages, others can sell electricity back into the grid at a premium, said Ethan Vera, co-founder of Luxor Tech, which really is a crypto mining company that is u.S.-based. Most mining farms are offline, Vera said.

As a result of Texas outage, hashrate produced from Luxor’s mining pool has decreased by 40%. Almost all of hashrate for the mining that is whole arises from the U.S. mining farms, Vera said.

While it isn't clear exactly what precise portion of hashrate in the global mining pool is from Texas-based facilities, some of the bitcoin that is biggest (BTC, +0.08%) mining companies, such as Bitmain and Layer 1, have operations in Texas because of the state’s cheap electricity.

Crypto mining giant Bitmain built certainly one of the world’s bitcoin mines that are biggest in Rockdale, East Texas, in 2019. Peter crypto that is thiel-backed company Layer1 Technologies started operating its bitcoin factories in West Texas in early 2020. Publicly traded bitcoin mining company Argo Blockchain (ARB) announced week that is final meant to acquire land to create mining facilities in West Texas.

Some mining farms are taking advantage of the problem by offering regional residents their electricity that is unused.

“Some bitcoin miners could actually capitalize on attempting to sell their unused power back to the grid for a revenue that is huge” JP Baric, CEO of Texas-based crypto mining company MiningStore, stated on Sunday.

Texas’ power grid has already lost a small portion of energy production throughout the week-end that is last wind generators had been frozen and gas offered to electric plants became scarce, based on Dan Woodfin, senior manager associated with the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).

By Sunday all types of power sources, including flowers being nuclear coal flowers and thermal generators, had been falling off the grid because of the winter storm, Woodfin said, according to a report within the Austin American Statesman.

According to TechCrunch, about 30 gigawatts worth of power is offline, with 26 gigawatts of that from thermal energy while the remainder coming from wind sources.

The effect regarding the climate that is extreme on bitcoin mining facilities goes beyond the Lone celebrity State. Mining farms in Kentucky have also been negatively affected by the storms.