SocraticGadfly: Crypto sucking at the ERCOT teat

December 07, 2022

Crypto sucking at the ERCOT teat

Texas (shock me) is becoming a bitcoin haven, even encouraged by ERCOT. Despite all the dubiousness involved after Sam Bankman-Fried, I'm sure this won't slow down. Another issue: what if another Uri strokes and overloads the "independent Texas grid"? As the Observer notes, ERCOT has yet to respond to a query by Congresscritters about how prepared it is for this. And, you and I know that means it ain't. 

As SBF showed, Dem politicos of the neoliberal stripe, like Tex-ass' own Beat-0, mentioned in the piece, are crypto "evangelists" as much as libertarian GOPers and straight Libertarians.

Part of the reason Tex-ass is a haven? The wind farms in West Texas often have "stranded power" because the dipshits at ERCOT don't have enough transmission lines connecting them to the west of the state. (Smoke that, Wayne-o not so Christian.)

The story does note, as far as issues when the grid gets tight, that crypto turned off its mining — and got all sorts of grifting financial credits. Rep. Al Green, one of the query authors, said this was a new form of arbitrage.

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