Iceland has cut power to Bitcoin miners

Iceland’s national electricity company Landsvirkjun said it had been forced to reduce its energy allocation to bitcoin miners.

Iceland cuts power to new Bitcoin miners

Electricity shortages in Iceland have led the island’s main utility, Landsvirkjun, to cut supplies to some industrial customers such as aluminum smelters, data centers and fishmeal plants, and to reject new bitcoin mining companies.

It is reported that they have reduced the amount of electricity supplied to several industries, including aluminum smelters and bitcoin mining machines in the southwest, as well as various industrial plants.

Hive Blockchain Technologies, Genesis Mining, and Bitfury Keeping of Canada are the top three Bitcoin miners to have opened facilities in Iceland. Therefore, all three have to rethink their business models.

Mining operations have long been drawn to the country as the abundant geothermal energy is used to create an abundant and inexpensive supply of renewable energy. But as of December 7th, all new applications for electricity from the mining operation will be denied indefinitely.

For almost ten years, miners have been trying to realize the promise of environmentally friendly Bitcoin mining in Iceland. In 2013, cloud hashing brought 100 miners to Iceland. In November 2017, the Austrian company HydroMiner GmbH raised around 2.8 million US dollars in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to install mining rigs directly in power plants in the USA. However, this promise does not seem to have been fulfilled. Less than 1% of the country’s electricity is generated from non-renewable sources.

Accordingly, the country’s aluminum smelter was hit hardest by the delivery failures. Aluminum prices rose 1.1% on December 7th to reflect supply bottlenecks caused by the recent surge in demand and the current shortage of electricity.