How crypto mining could impact Texas' power grid in years to come

[TexasTowelie]

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Cryptocurrency mining is expected to grow significantly in Texas over the next five years, which could have a big impact on our electric grid.

According to estimates from ERCOT, miners could use about five gigawatts of energy by 2023.

“It’s growing from close to zero just a few years ago,” Carey King, the assistant director at UT-Austin’s Energy Institute, said earlier this month.

“Each miner is about the size of a desktop computer. And if you’re a large industrial scale bitcoin miner, you might have thousands of these computers running,” Lee Bratcher with the Texas Blockchain Council said.

Bratcher explained bitcoin mining is a process by which the Bitcoin network is secured, and how new bitcoins enter into circulation.

Read more: https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/how-crypto-mining-could-impact-texas-power-grid-in-years-to-come/

[COL Mustard]

1. I had someone approach me with an offer

To learn how to mine bitcoins. I couldn’t understand what he was trying to explain, and he couldn’t explain it in a way that I could understand. In the end I walked away and told him it sounded like a scam. I still do.