Bitcoin miners located in Texas reportedly suffered a severe disruption to their operations due to a snowstorm that hit the region.
Extreme weather conditions led them to shut down their machines to preserve the local power grid.
Cold winter in Texas surprised crypto miners
As reported Per Bloomberg, the ice storm that hit the “Lone Star State” damaged some of the equipment of domestic bitcoin miners. Electricity consumption increased significantly due to the low temperatures, and those companies had to temporarily close their businesses to protect the power grid.
The weather is still surprisingly cold in Texas, and authorities have forced power outages in some areas. Can Zhao, CMO at JDK Capital, explained how this affected his company:
“The duration of the cuts is about six hours a day, starting Monday. We are seeing a 25% loss in computing power compared to a typical day for the site.”
Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council, said the hardest-hit entities were miners with mobile containers, “many of which were not designed to withstand winter storms.”
Texas had to endure another blizzard around Christmas. One of the major BTC miners in the region, Argo Blockchain, said that weather conditions significantly decreased its production power. He mined just 147 bitcoins in December, compared to 198 BTC in November.
Summer could be dangerous too
Argo Blockchain, Riot Blockchain, and many other Texas-based miners also ceased operations last summer, when a heat wave with temperatures in excess of 40 degrees (Celsius) hit the state.
Bratcher revealed that more than 1,000 megawatts of bitcoin mining load was shut down to conserve power for the electric grid.
“This represents nearly all of the industrial-scale Bitcoin mining load in Texas and allows for more than 1% of the total network capacity to be brought back onto the network for commercial and retail use,” he explained.
Despite the weather anomalies, the state (with its friendly legislation and low cost of electricity) has become one of the US crypto mining hubs.
Like CryptoPotato above reportedsome Chinese miners even contemplated moving their businesses to the area due to the harsh environment of their homeland.
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This post Texas BTC Miners Face More Trouble After Another Storm Hits State: Report
was published first on https://cryptopotato.com/texas-btc-miners-face-more-problems-after-another-storm-hit-the-state-report/
