The January Arctic blast has brought the Bitcoin mining process to come to a chilling halt, after Bitcoin miners in the state of Texas find themselves faced with the painful decision to temporarily shutdown their mining farm.

You would be wrong to think that the Arctic blast is just limited to the United States, because of the impact could be felt by the rest of the world given how the U.S holds approximately 36% share of the global Bitcoin mining hashrate, with the freezing Texas state holding slightly less than half of that amount-17%.

Bitcoin mining sees first major shift in half a year

The cold weather isn't just causing discomfort for residents-it is also wreaking havoc on Texas's energy grid. As the temperature drops, residents are forced to turn their heaters on, driving up the prices of electricity.

As Bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive operation that requires a constant and reliable supply of electricity to power the thousands of machines that process of cryptocurrency's transactions, many Bitcoin miners struggle to bare the increased price of electricity to continue their operations.

Miner revenue per terahash has also slightly decreased in January compared to December, suggesting that firms are having a more difficult time mining Bitcoin for a profit.

This resulted in the downward adjustment of the Bitcoin mining difficulty for the first time since September 2024. Bitcoin's mining difficulty is normally adjusted every two weeks based on the performance of the miners, with the goal of keeping the time between blocks to around ten minutes.

For the past six months, the mining difficulty has more or less remained steady with two exceptions: the difficulty fell on September 25, 2024 after climbing to an all-time high in the start of September, and it fell again on January 27, 2025.

While some Bitcoin miners are turning to natural gas as an alternative source of power, others are trying to diversify their operations by directing some processing power towards AI and high-performance computing workloads.

Crypto mining companies temporarily close their farm to stand in solidarity

But profitability is not the only reason why Bitcoin miners are closing to temporarily cease their operations; some crypto mining companies-such as Riot Blockchain-have chosen to power down operations to help ease the burden on the state's already beleaguered power grid.

Some Bitcoin mining companies came to the realisation that instead of competing with local residents for electricity, why not cease this opportunity to help their community?

For this reason, many have decided to minimize their power usage to the bare minimum or temporarily close down their mining farms so as to allow the rest of the community to have enough electricity during this cold winter.

In an interview with CNBC, Trystine Payfer, the director of communications at Riot Blockchain shared how the company has chosen to take desperate measures to cut down on the power usage of the company to help the state during this freezing time

"As the storm has progressed, we have continued to decrease our power consumption by 98-99%. So currently, we are only using 1-2% of power."

Payfer also added that the company will continue to manage its power usage as needed until there's no extreme stress on the state's power grid.

Following Riot's Blockchain's actions, more and more crypto miners across of Texas has also chosen to follow suit in voluntarily curtailing energy consumption in the run-up to the arctic blast.

In a X post, the Ceo of Rhodium Enterprises, Nathan Nichols also wrote about how Texas-based bitcoin miners were curtaining their load starting Wednesday

"We are proud to help stabilize the grid and help our fellow Texans stay warm"

Impact of the Arctic Storm on the price of Bitcoin

But experts have assured that the all these would have little impact on the price of Bitcoin.

They also expressed their optimism that this is just a temporary disruption and Bitcoin mining would go back to normal once the storm clears.

"Colder weather in the U.S is a temporary disruption, and we expect hashrate stability to improve as temperatures normalize."