Bitcoin: Focus shifts to Texas as BTC registers growth in mining activity

• Texas, a Bitcoin mining hub, saw a 75% jump in power usage in 2022.
• Miner revenue per exahash rose 27% on a year-to-date basis.

Crypto mining company BitDeer disclosed that it has significantly expanded the developed capacity of its mining site in Texas. According to BlocksBridge, the operational capacity of the Rockdale site was 386 MW in June, which was boosted to 562 MW by H2 2022, representing an increase of 45%.

The report added that much of BitDeer’s growth over the last year was driven by the construction in Rockdale. Interestingly, Riot Blockchain, which is the largest Bitcoin miner as per market cap, also claimed to have 700 MW in developed capacity in the same Texas city.

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Texas – the hub of Bitcoin mining

As per Statista, the U.S. is a major center for global Bitcoin [BTC] mining, accounting for a lion’s share of the total hashrate for the period 2019-2022.

Well, the south-central state of Texas has played a big role in pushing the country to the numero uno spot. After the Chinese authorities launched a crackdown on the industry in 2021, miners made their way to Texas owing to its comparatively low energy prices and lack of regulation.

As per a 24 March report by Reuters, the mining power usage in Texas jumped 75% in 2022 and was nearly triple that of the previous 12 months. Some regions in the state offer tax benefits and miners were attracted to the state’s wind and solar power.

However, the prolonged bear market of 2022 saw miners’ revenue tumble with many of them cutting back expansion plans.

To add to that, the industry faced fresh regulatory challenges including a proposal to levy a 30% excise tax on the cost of powering crypto mining facilities.

State of Bitcoin mining

According to data from Bitcoin explorer Mempool, the difficulty on the network reached a fresh all-time high at 46.84 T.

Due to the rise in difficulty levels, BTC miners had to use more computational power to mine blocks, as the hash rate soared to 338 EH/s.

Source: Mempool

It was evident that traffic on the network increased significantly in 2023 which was driving up the difficulty and hash rate. Miners looked to be in a dominant position as their revenue per exahash rose 27% on a year-to-date (YTD) basis.

Source: Glassnode

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Bitcoin mining has become a sticky issue with environmentalists accusing it of being one the major emitters of greenhouse gases.

It’s estimated that Bitcoin consumes electricity at an annualized rate of 136 terawatt-hours (TWh), which is more than the entire annual electricity consumption of countries like Pakistan and Ukraine.