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Texas Plans to Become the Bitcoin Capital, Vulnerable Power Grid and All

Crypto miners with more than double the power demand of Austin are descending on the anti-regulation state. 

Workers install a new row of Bitcoin mining machines at the Whinstone Bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, on October 9, 2021.

Workers install a new row of Bitcoin mining machines at the Whinstone Bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, on October 9, 2021.

Photographer: Mark Felix/AFP/Getty Images

Texas, already home to the most vulnerable power grid in the U.S., is about to be hit by a surge in demand for electricity that’s twice the size of Austin’s.

An army of cryptocurrency miners heading to the state for its cheap power and laissez-faire regulation is forecast to send demand soaring by as much as 5,000 megawatts over the next two years. The crypto migration to Texas has been building for months, but the sheer volume of power those miners will need — two times more than the capital city of almost 1 million people consumed in all of 2020 — is only now becoming clear.