Iceland’s national electricity company Landsvirkjun says it is forced to reduce its energy allocation to Bitcoin miners.
Iceland cuts power to new Bitcoin miners
A lack of power in Iceland has caused the island’s main utility, Landsvirkjun, to reduce supplies to some industrial customers, such as aluminum smelters, data centers, and fish meal factories, as well as turn away new Bitcoin miners.
It is reported that they have cut back on the amount of electricity that will be supplied to several industries, including aluminum smelters and Bitcoin mining machines in the southwest, and various industrial facilities.
Canada’s Hive Blockchain Technologies, Genesis Mining, and Bitfury Holding are the three main Bitcoin mining companies that have opened facilities in Iceland. As such, all three will have to rethink their business models.
Mining operations have long been attracted to the country as the abundant geothermal energy is harnessed to create an abundant and cheap supply of renewable energy. But from December 7, for an indefinite period, any new requests for electricity from mining operations will be denied.
For almost ten years, miners have been trying to realize the promise of eco-friendly Bitcoin mining in Iceland. In 2013, Cloud Hashing moved 100 miners to Iceland. In November 2017, Austrian company HydroMiner GmbH raised about $2.8 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) to install mining rigs directly at power plants in Iceland. However, it seems that this promise has not come true. Less than 1% of the country’s electricity is generated from non-renewable sources.
Accordingly, the country’s aluminum smelting industry has been hardest hit by distribution failure. Aluminum prices rose 1.1% on Dec. 7 to reflect the bottleneck in supply created by a recent surge in demand and the present power supply crunch.
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