Bitcoin mining has long been attacked by policymakers as an expensive, wasteful industry consuming power that would otherwise be going to households or valuable industries. Indeed, the scale of global Bitcoin mining is massive: Coin Metrics estimates that Bitcoin miners today consume 13.5GW of power, equivalent to 15% of the peak generation capacity of the Texas grid. But in recent years miners have adapted to changing grid conditions and found ways to make their presence much more benign — whether this involves exploiting entirely stranded sources of power, like flared gas, by co-locating with under-monetized renewables, or by participating in grid flexibilization initiatives.
Bitcoin miners are pioneers in this respect, in the future we can expect other types of energy-intense industries to follow their lead. In future years, I expect that Bitcoin miners will be looked on by environmentalists and policymakers not with scorn, but with grudging admiration. In time, it will be undeniable that miners helped develop a new type of industrial “smart load” that is more able to accommodate renewables, bring load to the generation source and turn down when necessary.