The Seattle Times published this interesting story about the demise of cryptocurrency mining in Central WA, which once was “ground zero for the U.S. crypto boom”. One crypto-miner (Malachi Salcido) recently decided that another crypto bust was coming (oh, one of the smart guys!) and shut down mining to convert to conventional data processing for other companies, calling it a “less volatile business”.
A lot of other crypto-miners have gone out of business or headed to Texas. Some of this was imposed on them:
Part of that new quietude is forced. To shield local power grids from crypto’s boom-bust dynamic and short-term investment horizons, the utilities adopted new rates and other policies for their hydropower, which typically goes for around 2.5 cents to 5 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to around 15 cents for U.S. average.
Basically the Chelan (WA) PUD charges miners triple what it does residents (and other more modestly drawing businesses?) for electricity. The other part is that they aren’t in a hurry to approve large new requests for power without taking some time to review the effect on their grid. It turns out getting a mining operation up quickly with a lot of computing power right from the start is a crucial part of making money before the cost goes up too much and cuts into profits.
Texas is more of a free-for-all for quick building permits and electrical load request approvals. Given the (deliberately) barely adequate condition of the Texas grid that might not work out all that well for miners if the utilities hit them with the same unlimited shortage price rate increases they love to invoke during grid collapses.
There’s still some mining going on in Central WA, but it’s now down to about 3.5% of total load in Chelan.
edit to remove extraneous “once” from the quote in the first sentence