Bitcoin miners beef up Texas operations ahead of extinction-level event, exclusive data shows
Foundry’s Kevin Zhang with Jihan Wu, the founder and chairman of Bitdeer and a co-founder of Bitmain.
Kevin Zhang
Crypto winters don’t scare Kevin Zhang, who has been in the business of mining bitcoin for ten years. He’s lived through a few bear markets in the last decade, but no matter where he has set up shop — the U.S., Sweden, the Republic of Georgia, and China — he’s survived every one. In fact, it is precisely when things look most grim for the sector that Zhang typically doubles down.
In 2013, for example, China banned bitcoin for the first time. The world’s largest cryptocurrency immediately began to crash, and it was a slow bleed down in price for the next few years. As a wave of Western companies went bankrupt, Zhang decided to jump into mining.
“I saw an opportunity to leverage my Chinese language skills and cultural background to become one of the earliest and largest overseas customers of Chinese ASIC manufacturers,” said Zhang, who was born in America but spent his early childhood in Beijing and Shenzhen.
For the next four years, he sourced gear and institutional knowledge from China, ultimately scaling up a site in Montana to become the largest bitcoin mining facility in North America. Zhang has since brought that same cavalier attitude to Foundry, a mining firm tucked under Barry Silbert’s crypto empire.
In May 2020, bitcoin miners suffered two big blows: Much of the world shut down as Covid cases spiked and the most recent halving had just slashed the mining reward from 12.5 to 6.25 bitcoin per block mined. Zhang and the team at Foundry shrugged off the double whammy of blackswan events and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on its mining business, deploying tens of thousands of machines. By Nov. 2021, bitcoin hit an all-time peak of nearly $70,000.
But the stakes are higher this time around.
Bitcoin miners are barreling toward the “halving” — a major market-making event that some fear will be a death knell to many in the industry. It happens roughly every four years and refers to an inflation-curbing schedule baked into bitcoin’s code where the reward for mining a new block of transactions gets cut in half. Historically, it also coincides with the start of a bull run in the price of cryptocurrencies.
Whereas traders eagerly await the halving, hoping for a potential spike in bitcoin’s price, it represents a direct hit to revenues for miners, as they will receive 50% less bitcoin for every block they verify. In a capital-intensive industry with already tight margins, the reduced reward has the potential to prove apocalyptic for some operators.
“This is the ultimate test for miners,” said Zhang, Foundry’s senior vice president of business development. “Some may not make it through; some may. But I feel confident that if they work with us, and work with other strong actors, they may have a good chance to survive this.”
When the halving takes effect in Apr. 2024, the reward for miners will drop to 3.125 bitcoin, or around $83,000. By comparison, the first blocks of bitcoin mined in 2009 carried a reward of 50 bitcoin.
Without a commensurate surge in bitcoin’s price to counterbalance the diminished block rewards, many mining outfits — especially those burdened by rising energy costs, paying down on machines bought at peak pricing in 2021 — could get obliterated overnight.
But rather than seeing the 2024 halving as an extinction-level event, Foundry is expanding its operations — diving into machine sales, on-site deployment, and logistics.
FoundryX is a marketplace for buying and selling miners, both new and used — while their recently unveiled logistics arm deals in the deployment and shipment of miners across state lines and international borders. Managed site services is another program newly debuted where, for its U.S. customers, Foundry will help staff and manage miners on-site.
“Foundry is in this for the long haul,” said Zhang. “We’re taking a long-term bet on bitcoin and on the fact that bitcoin mining will survive and will bounce back even stronger.”
After China launched a fresh campaign against bitcoin mining in 2021, much of the industry migrated west to the U.S. Since then, some states have battled it out to attract mining companies, while others have actively legislated against them.
The controversy goes to energy consumption. Mining at-scale involves data centers packed with highly specialized computers that crunch math equations in order to validate transactions and simultaneously create new tokens. It requires expensive equipment, some technical know-how, and a lot of electricity. Whereas places like Texas and Wyoming welcome the trade, New York lawmakers have created rules designed, in part, to keep miners out.
A mining pool lets a single miner combine its hashing power with thousands of other miners all over the world. Even though some miners opt to hide their geographic footprint with a virtual private network, pools still function as a useful gauge of the general geographic spread of the mining industry.
Foundry opted to show states even with small amounts of hashrate — an industry term used to describe the computing power of all miners in the bitcoin network — to demonstrate that mining is happening across the country on the Foundry USA Pool.
Whinstone CEO Chad Harris takes CNBC on a tour of the largest bitcoin mine in North America.
The new data also confirms that Texas has cemented its position as the crypto capital of the United States, as miners flock there for abundant clean energy and a permissive regulatory environment.
Texas made up 8.43% of the hashrate in the U.S. as of the end of 2021, and that percentage has jumped to 28.50% as of July 27, 2023 — though Foundry notes that the data was aggregated during a period of heavy curtailment in July, so Texas’s percentage of actual hashrate is even greater than what’s reflected on their latest map. Zhang added that Texas’s growth in Foundry’s map also had to do with the fact that the firm took on more clients there in the past two years.
Given that the U.S. is currently the world leader in terms of its share of the collective hashrate of the bitcoin network, that makes Texas the bitcoin capital of the world.
Texas has grown to dominate bitcoin mining partly because of support from local authorities and the operator of the Texas energy grid, ERCOT. ERCOT has historically struggled with fluctuating energy prices and sporadic service, so it strikes deals with flexible energy buyers like bitcoin miners to help keep excess energy online during low-demand cycles, then offers incentives for miners to stop their work, allowing that excess energy to flow back to the grid when demand is high.
Research from Castle Island Venture’s Nic Carter and a collective of other industry practitioners including Lancium’s Shaun Connell and the former interim chief of ERCOT, Brad Jones, found that over the past decade, instances of negative pricing surged considerably, accounting for more than 6% of all hours in 2022 across wholesale markets in the U.S. The research paper went on to note that negative priced power may increase further in Texas, in particular, given that the state is rapidly onboarding wind and solar to its grid. Those conditions are ideal for bitcoin miners.
“All you have to do is pay the miners slightly more than what they would have made mining for bitcoin that hour,” said bitcoin mining engineer Brandon Arvanaghi, who now runs Meow, a company that enables corporate treasury participation in crypto markets. Arvanaghi calls the setup a “a win-win.”
For years, Riot has been powering down operations at its Rockdale mine, about an hour from Austin, to help ease the burden on the state’s grid. In July, for instance, bitcoin miner Riot Platforms raked in more than $31.7 million to keep its mining operations offline — $24.2 million came from energy sold back to the ERCOT grid and the other $7.4 million came via demand response credits.
“August was a landmark month for Riot in showcasing the benefits of our unique power strategy,” said Jason Les, CEO of Riot, in a recent press release. “The effects of these credits significantly lower Riot’s cost to mine Bitcoin and are a key element in making Riot one of the lowest cost producers of bitcoin in the industry.”
Even during the bear market, Texas miners are building out, buying new sites and fresh fleets of hardware.
Riot Platforms, for example, has aggressive expansion plans in place in other parts of the state, including Navarro and Milam counties.
“Riot’s ability to source such a significant expansion opportunity in Texas exemplifies the Company’s partnership-driven approach with all stakeholders, including the Company’s business partners, ERCOT, and all levels of government, to commit to sustainable economic development,” Les said of the expansion plan.
Bitdeer, which operates its biggest facility four-tenths of a mile down the road Riot’s mine in Rockdale, is also in expansion mode. The mining company was spun off from Chinese bitcoin mining giant Bitmain and went public via SPAC earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Cipher Mining purchased 11,000 new mining machines for its facility in Odessa, Texas, while Foundry has acquired mining sites from the bankruptcy estate of Compute North in Minden, Nebraska, and Big Spring, Texas.
Elsewhere in the U.S., previous leaders in bitcoin mining saw their influence wane.
In the last two years, Foundry’s dataset shows that Georgia — a miner-friendly state offering competitive pricing on electricity, as well as a mix of renewable power sources including solar and nuclear, has seen its share of the U.S. hashrate plunge from 34.17% to 9.64%. The drop was driven by a combination of factors, including Texas’s growth overall and Foundry’s expanding operations in particular, as well as by measurement differences — one large miner in the state declined to have their activity included in this year’s map.
Though its growth was stagnant compared to the previous study, New York’s share of the U.S. hashrate declined from 9.53% in 2021 to 8.75%, driven mainly by the state’s moratorium against new miners issued in Nov. 2022.
Other mining winners that showed notable growth during the period included New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, while Nebraska, North Carolina, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Washington all saw significant drops.
Despite the plunge in bitcoin valuations since 2021, as well as increasing regulatory scrutiny from the Securities Exchange Commission and other agencies looking to regulate some cryptocurrencies like securities, the total U.S. hashrate — a proxy for industry competition — has more than doubled since the end of 2021.
According to an analyst note from JPMorgan Chase on Sept. 1, the bitcoin network’s overall hashrate set a record high for the eighth consecutive month in August. Foundry says the rise is driven in part by institutions entering the space.
JP Morgan researchers also note that the mining business has gotten less lucrative — miners make an average of $66,400 per day per exahash of mining capacity, versus nearly $342,000 at bitcoin’s peak in Nov. 2021.
Meanwhile, the aggregate market cap of the 14 U.S.-listed miners tracked by the bank has plunged below $10 billion. Riot was the biggest loser in August, down 39%, while Bitdeer was the biggest winner, up 30%.
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Coming in hot… well, as hot as these solar cars can get, upwards of 60 mph.
It’s hard to believe we’re just over a month away from this year’s Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix 2025 collegiate solar car track event! In July, some of the greatest engineering minds from universities across North America will roll into Bowling Green, Kentucky, with their respective hand-built solar-powered EVs to go head-to-head in a competition all about pushing the limits of sustainable transport. The goal? Complete as many laps as possible each race day using nothing but sunshine.
The event is open to the public and free to attend. Raycing kicks off on July 3 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT and continues through July 5 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. CT. You’re not going to want to miss this!
As a refresher, the Formula Sun Grand Prix (FSGP) is held annually and typically acts as a pre-qualifier for the American Solar Challenge (ASC), a cross-country solar car race held every two years. During ASC years, FSGP is where teams prove their vehicles are road-worthy and safe enough to trek over 1,500+ miles from Tennessee to Wyoming on public roads.
This year, however, is an off-year for ASC. Teams will only compete in the track event. Here are last year’s FSGP/ASC results and highlights.
The 2025 Electrek FSGP will again be held at the National Corvette Museum Motorsports Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky, which, interestingly enough, General Motors occasionally uses for Corvette testing and development. It’s here, students will go head-to-head in a grand prix-style event, competing to complete as many laps as possible using nothing but solar power. It may sound simple, but it’s a test of speed, efficiency, and endurance.
Last year’s event drew a record turnout, with more than 32 teams and 710 student participants from universities across the U.S. and Canada.
The ASC and FSGP are organized by the Innovators Educational Foundation (IEF), a 501c3 non-profit providing hands-on, multidisciplinary learning opportunities for college students. In 2023, Electrek announced the signing of a five-year title sponsorship agreement with the IEF, which will guarantee funds to host the yearly races through 2028.
This was a natural fit. EVs, solar power, sustainable transport, and collaboration—this is what we’re all about at Electrek, and we’re thrilled to once again be a part of such an incredible event.
Other 2025 Electrek FSGP sponsors include Altair, Blue Origin, MathWorks, Generac, and in previous years Tesla, which have used the event as prime recruiting grounds. In fact, in past years, one recruiter even told Electrek that “getting great employees at the Formula Sun Grand Prix was like shooting fish in a barrel” and added “students at these events are orders of magnitude more likely to yield successful hires than typical campus recruiting events.”
And when it comes to industry talent, FSGP/ASC has serious roots.
JB Straubel, Tesla’s co-founder, ex-CTO, and current sitting board member, got his start in the Stanford Solar Car program. While he currently serves as CEO of lithium-ion battery materials company Redwood Materials, Straubel talks about how many of Tesla’s early hires came straight out of that same solar car team in the video below.
If you’re interested in joining us in sponsoring these events, please get in touch here!
We’ll continue to post more details, including the full schedule, as the race nears! Keep an eye on the website as well.
2024 Electrek FSGP/ASC recaps
Below are the full recap videos from the Formula Sun Grand Prix/American Solar Challenge. The event’s official Flickr page has also amassed more than 1,500 photos. Check them out—they’re super cool!
More details and full results on last year’s Electrek American Solar Challenge and Formula Sun Grand Prix can be found on the event’s website.
Note: The Formula Sun Grand Prix is not in any way associated or affiliated with the Formula 1 companies, FORMULA 1 racing, or the FIA Formula One World Championship.
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The struggling carmaker is urgently cutting costs as it looks to turn things around. Nissan is offering buyouts to US workers at its Canton, Mississippi, plant, citing it as a “crucial” part of its comeback plan.
Nissan offers buyouts for US workers at its Canton plant
Nissan has been in the spotlight over the past few weeks for all the wrong reasons. It began earlier this month, following the company’s announcement that it was abandoning plans to build a new EV battery plant in Japan.
The facility was set to produce lower-cost LFP batteries, which have been key to BYD and other Chinese EV brands’ rapid rise in the global auto industry. With an annual production capacity of up to 5 GWh, the plant was expected to slash EV battery costs by 20% to 30%.
Facing slumping sales, lower profits, and more competition, Nissan launched its new recovery plan, dubbed “Re:Nissan,” earlier this month.
The comeback strategy involves cutting 20,000 jobs, or around 15% of its global workforce, by 2027. Nissan is also closing several plants to slash costs by 250 billion yen as it aims to return to profitability by fiscal year 2026.
According to an internal email, viewed by Reuters, Nissan is offering buyouts for US workers at its Canton plant. The email also stated that merit-based pay increases are suspended globally.
Christian Meunier, Nissan America’s chairman, said the buyouts are “crucial for Nissan’s comeback” in the US, its most important market.
“While substantial efforts have been made in the US to help right-size Nissan, we need to take additional, limited, strategic action here at a local level,” Meunier said in an email.
Nissan announced a voluntary separation program for a select number of US salaried employees. Since the plan is still ongoing, Nissan didn’t provide any further details.
On Wednesday, a separate report from Bloomberg News claimed that Nissan is looking to raise over 1 trillion yen ($6.9 billion) with the help of the UK government to repay a massive loan due next year.
Nissan invested $500 million to upgrade its Canton plant for electric vehicle (EV) production in the US. Although it initially planned to begin building EVs in the US this year, Nissan delayed production until at least 2028.
Later this year, Nissan will launch the upgraded LEAF, now with a longer driving range, an NACS charging port, and a more SUV-like design. It will be one of ten new Nissan or Infiniti models to launch by 2027.
Electrek’s Take
As Electrek reported yesterday, Nissan’s comeback plan hinges on its upgraded e-Power technology. The only issue is that the system is designed for hybrids.
Nissan is following in Toyota and Honda’s footsteps by advancing new hybrid and plug-in hybrid tech, but the company is already two steps behind.
Doubling down on hybrids and PHEVs while delaying more EV projects will likely only set Nissan up for failure over the next few years.
The Japanese automaker is already losing market share in some of its biggest markets, like China and Southeast Asia.
Can Nissan turn things around in the US, its most important market? Or, will it continue to fall out of favor with lower-cost, more advanced EVs on the way from brands like Rivian and Lucid? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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