The most pronounced storm-related impact appeared at Foundry USA and Luxor, both of which have significant exposure to U.S.-based mining operations and grid conditions.
Foundry’s hashrate fell sharply from about 260 EH/s on January 24 to roughly 124 EH/s the following day, before recovering to around 134 EH/s by Monday, a pattern consistent with large-scale curtailments. Luxor, meanwhile, showed a proportional decline, dropping from roughly 40 EH/s to about 16 EH/s by Monday.
Other major pools also recorded declines, though with more mixed geographic exposure. Antpool, which has U.S. operations through a joint venture with Applied Digital, fell from around 165 EH/s to about 137 EH/s at press time.
“Part of the business model”“Weather events, power pricing, maintenance cycles, and localized grid conditions regularly cause temporary fluctuations, which are absorbed by Bitcoin’s global distribution and difficulty adjustment mechanism,” Fakhul Miah, managing director at infrastructure developer GoMining Institutional, told Decrypt.
More broadly, those slowdowns indicate a shift in the Bitcoin mining industry.
The adjustments show these mechanisms “are becoming a normal part of mining operations, as Bitcoin mining increasingly functions as a flexible load that can adjust to the needs of modern power grids,” Miah added.
The Bitcoin network appears to be “doing what it’s supposed to do under stress,” Callan Sarre, co-founder and chief product officer at Bitcoin infrastructure firm Threshold Labs, told Decrypt.
“Concentrated U.S. hashrate came offline, block intervals widened temporarily, and then the system began reverting toward its baseline,” he explained.
These slowdowns are “a side‑effect of miners acting as a flexible, dispatchable load for the grid,” he said.
This is evident in markets like Texas, Sarre said, noting how curtailment during extreme weather appears to have become a “part of the business model,” such that miners “ramp down when residential demand spikes, earn demand‑response revenue, and then ramp back up once the grid stabilizes, all while Bitcoin’s consensus layer remains intact.”
