And people in locations with big crypto farms can feel the hit in their own energy bills. Even people who never even heard of crypto will start to care when it hits their own pocketbook.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/09/business/bitcoin-mining-e...
> In Texas, where 10 of the 34 mines are connected to the state’s grid, the increased demand has caused electric bills for power customers to rise nearly 5 percent, or $1.8 billion per year
> The program pays miners, and other companies, for promising to stop using electricity upon request. In reality, they are rarely asked to shut down, but are still paid for making the pledge.
> From midnight to nearly 4 p.m. on June 23, Riot earned more than $42,000 from the program while continuing to mine Bitcoin. (Overall in 2022, Riot made nearly $9.3 million from participating in the program nearly 85 percent of the time, the data shows, though the grid operator asked companies to actually lower their use for about 3.5 hours.)
> Around that time, the company switched to the second technique: avoiding fees that Texas charges to maintain and strengthen the power grid. It did so by briefly shutting off almost completely.
> To incentivize big customers to conserve electricity, those fees are based on how much electricity they use during several peak summer moments. Riot reduced its power use by more than 99 percent.
> By 6:30 p.m., the company had resumed mining. If Riot had been fully operating all day, it would have incurred an estimated $5.5 million in fees — costs that are largely made up by other Texans. Over the course of the year, this saved Riot more than $27 million in potential fees.
> One final mechanism lets some companies make extra money when electricity prices spike: They can stop mining and resell electricity to other customers. That earned Riot roughly $18 million last year.