As China deliberately increases pressure on the cryptocurrency market, local miners have no choice but to move their equipment overseas. Texas is emerging as a popular choice with its cheap electricity, liberal laws, and generally good weather. The problem is that the massive influx of miners is seriously threatening the local power grid.
The cost of electricity is one of the important factors when mining cryptocurrencies since the entire mining process consumes a huge amount of electricity. The low cost of electricity in China played into the hands of the owners of mining farms – more than 60% of the world’s Bitcoin mining capacities were located here.
With its tax breaks for tech companies, Texas could be a place of pilgrimage for crypto farm owners – electricity prices are among the lowest in the US. American mining companies have settled here for a long time, and their number and computing power are only increasing.
Soon, Shenzhen’s BIT Mining, which is ready to invest $ 26 million in constructing a 57-megawatt data center, intends to take root in a foreign land. Beijing-based Bitmain intends to expand its facilities built in the south of the United States in 2019. Other companies from China are also preparing to join them.
The problem is that, despite having its own reserves of natural gas, wind farms, and cheap electricity in general, Texas has recently suffered from power outages that can only be exacerbated by the arrival of the international crypto business. Just the other day, the media reported that in the heat of the heat, residents raised the temperature on smart thermostats to reduce the load on the electrical networks due to the intensive use of air conditioners, and back in February, Texas suffered from power outages, on the contrary, due to sudden snowfall.
Since the state’s electricity market is very weakly regulated, it is possible that real chaos will reign in Chinese miners with the arrival of Chinese miners.