On 31st Dec last year, state electric utility Chernomorenergo RUE has announced on the Facebook platform that due to the electricity reasons, the Republic of Abkhazia has cut off the power to 15 crypto mining farms. The Chernomorenergo has cut 8,950-kilowatt hours (kWh) which is almost equal to the amount of electricity consumed by 1,800 houses.
This power cut is done as a temporary solution to curb electricity usage by a certain section of electricity subscribers. In the announcement, Chernomorenergo revealed that the owners of the crypto farms have rather showed understanding and cooperated with the cause.
The issue of electricity consumption by the crypto mining industry has been a global matter of concern. As per the reports from Cointelegraph, Norway was reported to end its electricity subsidies for Bitcoin mining facilities, last November. About this matter, Lars Haltbrekken, Parliamentary Representative for the Socialist Left Party (SV) said-
“Norway cannot continue to provide huge tax incentives for the dirtiest form of cryptocurrency output. […] [Bitcoin] requires a lot of energy and generates large generates large greenhouse gas emissions globally.”
On the other hand, Central Washington radio station KPQ announced in November that the Chelan County Public Utility District of the state of Washington, in the U.S. came up with a new electricity rating framework for the crypto miners. This proposal aims to decrease the costs of high demands of electricity, and also to address the costs and protects the customer investments who have already invested deeply in the system. Lindsey Mohns, the Customer Utilities Rate Adviser, said-
“What this new rate structure (Schedule 36) does is brings into it a market consideration on the energy price because we will have to purchase power on the market to serve the variable load associated with cryptocurrency.”
As per the reports from Diar, the year 2018 had a very interesting take on the crypto mining industry. On one hand where the mining industry has shown higher profits in comparison to the previous year’s (2017) profits, yet the miners in the first half of 2018, have reported that they have seen little gains. In the first nine months of 2018, the reward and fees for the BTC miners have reached 4.7 Billion Dollars. This amount is 1.4 Billion dollars more than last years. Crypto miners, as a result, profited 54,000 Bitcoins every month.
Last month as per the reports from Cointelegraph, despite the downturn in the crypto market, more and more Chinese miners were becoming short sellers. This made China the biggest short sellers on the global platform. A Chinese miner, Jin Xin, as per the reports from Cointelegraph said that he made more profit through crypto mining in two months than the other businesses that he has been continuing for three years. The shocking crypto market crash has stirred a new pattern in the miners, that is they have started to dodge their coins to duck market volatility.
