As cryptocurrency mining expands, it becomes less lucrative for each of the participants, more competitive, and more energy-intensive.
In Texas, cryptocurrency mining operations benefit from
- reduced electricity rates,
- tax subsidies, and
- incentive programs.
Together, these handouts to cryptocurrency companies mean huge profits, often at the expense of everyday Texans paying a monthly electricity bill.
Cryptomining operations profit from the state’s demand-response programs, which pays them whether or not they actually shut down. Demand-response programs are designed to stabilize the grid, not subsidize the expansion of energy-intensive industries. And demand-response programs are not offered to residential electricity users in Texas, instead the outsized financial benefits go to crypto miners. Cryptomining operations also make millions playing Texas’s deregulated energy market by selling electricity back to the grid at peak times.
