Bitcoin: Focus shifts to Texas as BTC records growth in mining activity
- Texas, a hub for Bitcoin mining, saw a 75% jump in electricity consumption in 2022.
- Miner earnings per exahash rose 27% year-to-date.
Crypto mining company BitDeer revealed that it has significantly expanded the developed capacity of its Texas mining site. According to BlocksBridge, the operating capacity of the Rockdale site was 386 MW in June, which was increased to 562 MW by H2 2022, representing a 45% increase.
The report added that much of BitDeer’s growth over the past year was driven by construction in Rockdale. Interestingly, Riot Blockchain, which is the largest Bitcoin miner by market cap, also claimed to have 700 MW of developed capacity in the same Texas city.
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Texas – the hub of Bitcoin mining
According to Statista, the United States is an important center for global Bitcoin [BTC] mining, which accounts for a lion’s share of the total hashrate for the period 2019-2022.
Well, the south-central state of Texas has played a major role in pushing the country to the numero uno spot. After Chinese authorities launched a crackdown on the industry in 2021, miners made their way to Texas because of its relatively low energy prices and lack of regulation.
According to a report by Reuters on March 24, mining power use in Texas increased by 75% in 2022 and was almost triple from the previous 12 months. Some regions of the state offer tax incentives and miners were attracted to the state’s wind and solar power.
However, the prolonged bear market in 2022 saw miners’ incomes fall and many of them cut back on expansion plans.
To add to that, the industry faced new regulatory challenges, including a proposal to impose a 30% excise tax on the cost of operating crypto mining facilities.
Status of Bitcoin Mining
According to data from Bitcoin explorer Mempool, the difficulty level on the network reached a new all-time high of 46.84T.
Due to the increase in difficulty levels, BTC miners had to use more computational power to mine blocks, as the hash rate rose to 338 EH/s.
Source: Mempool
It was clear that traffic on the network increased significantly in 2023, increasing the difficulty and hash rate. Miners appeared to be in a dominant position as their earnings per exahash rose 27% year-on-year (YTD).
Source: Glassnode
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Bitcoin mining has become a sticky issue with environmentalists accusing it of being one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.
It is estimated that Bitcoin uses electricity at an annual rate of 136 terawatt-hours (TWh), which is more than the entire annual electricity consumption of countries such as Pakistan and Ukraine.
