The bad weather left more than 250,000 consumers without electricity, which caused electricity prices to rise and forced cryptocurrency mining companies to stop mining and send electricity to local power grids.
An ice storm in Texas caused power outages and forced miners to suspend cryptocurrency mining, according to Bloomberg. The extreme weather also resulted in damage to some of their equipment.
Some of the largest mining companies in the world operate equipment for cryptocurrency mining in Texas. Among them are Riot Blockchain, Argo, Bitdeer, Argo, Compute North, Genesis Digital Assets and Core Scientific.
Freezing rain downed power lines in parts of the state this week, leaving more than 250,000 consumers without power. In addition, the emergency caused an increase in electricity prices, which forced some mining companies to turn off their devices.
Starting Monday, the outages last for about six hours a day, Kang Zhao, director of marketing for mining company JDK Capital, told the publication. According to him, the loss of computing power is approximately 25% per day. At the same time, he noted that the short-term effect of the capacity reduction does not affect the long-term prospects of the company, which has a 20 MW mining site near Dallas.
In addition to the skyrocketing energy costs caused by the storm, some miners have experienced hardware damage. This affected those whose devices were located in mobile containers that were not designed to work in winter storms.
The shutdowns of Texas miners significantly reduce the computing power of the Bitcoin network. From January 30 to January 31, the hash rate fell by 16.7%: from 269 EN/s to its lowest value this year – 224 EN/s, according to BTC.com. By February 2, the figure rose to 267 EN/s.
In the past year, extreme weather events in the United States have already led to massive shutdowns of miners in Texas twice. In mid-July, the heat, which reached 40 ° C, and calm weather deprived the power grid of the opportunity to use alternative energy sources, and large mining companies stopped working. Bitcoin hashrate then fell by 27% per day.
At the end of December, a severe cold snap and snow storms in the United States also caused a large number of mining farms to shut down and a decrease in computing power in the network of the leading cryptocurrency by 38%. However, according to reporters, some of the largest miners in Texas, including Riot Platforms, made a profit during the storm by selling electricity back to the grid.