A blizzard that tore through the area is said to have severely disrupted the operations of bitcoin miners in Texas.
They had to turn off their equipment due to the severe weather in order to protect the regional power grid.
The Cold Winter in Texas Surprised Crypto Miners
As reported by Bloomberg, the ice storm that hit “the Lone Star State” damaged some of the equipment of the domestic bitcoin miners. The low temperatures caused a significant increase in electricity consumption, forcing those companies to temporarily close their operations in order to safeguard the energy network.
Texas is still experiencing unexpectedly cold weather, and the government forced electricity restrictions in some areas. Can Zhao – CMO of JDK Capital – explain how this affected his company:
“The duration of curtailments is about six hours a day, starting from Monday. Comparing today to a typical site day, we are observing a 25% loss in computing power.”
Lee Bratcher – President of the Texas Blockchain Council – said the worst-affected entities were the miners with mobile containers, “many of which were not designed to be weather-proof for the winter storms.”
Around Christmas, Texas was hit with another blizzard. One of the leading BTC miners in the region – Argo Blockchain – said the weather conditions significantly diminished its production power. In contrast to the 198 BTC mined in November, only 147 BTC were produced in December.
The Summer Could Also Be Dangerous
When a heat wave with temperatures above 40 degrees (Celsius) struck Texas last summer, many Texas-based miners, including Argo Blockchain, Riot Blockchain, and many others, also stopped mining.
Bratcher revealed that over 1,000 megawatts worth of bitcoin mining load were switched off to conserve energy for the power grid.
“This represents nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin mining load in Texas and allows for over 1% of total grid capacity to be pushed back onto the grid for retail and commercial use,” he explained.
Despite the unusual weather, the state has become one of the USA’s top locations for cryptocurrency mining due to its friendly legislation and affordable electricity.
As CryptoPotato previously reported, even some Due to the hostile environment in their home country, Chinese miners thought about relocating their businesses there.
