Best Bitcoin Exchange for Canada
Cheap electricity and cold lure crypto currency prospectors to Canada. Some utilities are happy, others are resisting. The gold-digger mood around crypto currencies is causing distortions on Canadian electricity markets. The low electricity prices there are attracting so many companies that want to dig for Bitcoins and other crypto currencies on a large scale that some electricity providers are not able to meet them. But there are also power producers who are happy about the deal.
These include the town of Medicine Hat in the southeast of Alberta province. Medicine Hat has 63,000 inhabitants and sits on a natural gas field that is casually known as All Hell for a Basement. The official slogan of the city is “The Gas City”. The natural gas is used to produce cheap electricity, which has already brought the city several large factories and huge greenhouses.
Recently, Bitcoins are being mined: The company Hut 8 Mining has now installed 40 ship containers with special computing systems on an area of 40,000 square meters, which convert the electricity obtained from natural gas into Bitcoins and possibly other crypto money.
Air conditioners vs. Bitcoins
The system draws 67.2 megawatts around the clock, which produces 504 petahashes per second. According to Canadian broadcaster CBC, electricity consumption can be higher during the day than any other electricity customer in the city, including the factories. Hut 8 told that it was always less than half.
In any case, it’s a lot. A summer clause is supposed to secure the power supply: In a heat wave, the municipal utilities have secured the right, according to CBC, not to supply electricity to Hut8. This is because power-hungry air conditioners then run at full speed.
But Hut 8 is not worried: “Medicine Hat has enough capacity to supply both Hut8 and the city during a heat wave,” company boss Andrew Kiguel told, “No power outages. In the event of a technical problem, the power supply to Hut 8 would be reduced, which is standard for industrial consumers.
The price of electricity is a secret
Mayor Medicine Hats likes to announce the electricity price for private households: “The average price of all other electricity suppliers in the province is estimated. In addition, there is a “going green surcharge” of 0.0005 dollars per kilowatt hour. But what Hut 8 pays remains a secret. Only the property rent of less than 7,000 euros per month is known. The mayor is pleased about the sale of electricity and 42 jobs.
The town of Drumheller is two and a half hours’ drive northwest – a stone’s throw from Canada by Canadian standards. There, Hut 8 operates a second computer centre consisting of 17 ship containers. It draws 18.7 megawatts and produces 127.5 petahashes per second. According to Hut 8, the two plants together make it the world’s largest listed crypto prospector in terms of electricity consumption. The company also believes that it is one of the cheapest miners in the world.
No money printer at the moment
It remains to be seen whether this will be enough for profits. In the second quarter, when the Medicine Hat site had not yet been developed, the company was able to mine 786 Bitcoins. Some of the virtual coins are used to pay bills. The remaining Bitcoins land on the high edge, although the net quarterly loss reached almost five million Canadian dollars (almost 3.3 million euros).
We are optimistic about the Bitcoins’ long-term price development,” Kiguel said in August, “We will keep our Bitcoins once we have paid our costs. So the company is speculating on rising Bitcoin prices.
How this works exactly with Bitcoin mining is not so important in Medicine Hat outside the data center. “Digging’ is the industry term for the use of large computer facilities to roam the Internet in search of users who want to sell or buy Bitcoins or other crypto currencies,” the local daily was wrong in March.
Bitcoins made in BC
In British Columbia, too, investments are being made diligently in prospecting facilities. Cryptogazette reports about a project in Ocean Falls. The village is located on the Pacific coast and cannot be reached by land. It has a hydroelectric power station built for a sawmill that is no longer in operation. There is no connection to the supra-regional power grid, so a computer centre has been digging for crypto money in the village since July.
According to unconfirmed information, the operators pay less than 2.7 euro cents per kilowatt hour. However, the available capacity of the hydropower plant is in the single-digit kilowatt range. Other former sawmills also receive numerous enquiries.
In Revelstoke, on the other hand, a classic large hydroelectric power station (up to 2.48 gigawatts) is creating fantasies for the future. In April, the newspaper Revelstoke Mountaineer reported on preparations for a crypto plant with an initial capacity of 100 megawatts, which could be expanded to 1 gigawatt in the future. And in Castlegar, a prospector has even built himself the necessary transformer station to be able to mine six months earlier.
Without electricity no BTC
Meanwhile, the mood in Manitoba and Quebec has turned upside down. While miners were also welcome there at first, the power suppliers are now resisting. The demand for electricity for the calculations – which are meaningless in themselves – threatens to exceed the efficiency of the electricity system.
Quebec’s most important power supplier, Hydro-Québec, has been rejecting applications for new power connections for crypto prospectors since March. Hundreds of unprocessed applications are piling up. By July, these applications are said to have totalled no less than 18 gigawatts. This corresponds to more than 40 percent of Hydro-Quebec’s total electricity generation capacity.
Quebec’s energy regulator is currently undergoing an extensive process to find a way out. The province wants to set up computer centers, but not crypto prospectors. They have not yet buried the hope of cheap electricity.
An interim solution is currently in place: all operators who have concluded a contract before 6 June will receive the low-cost tariff agreed therein. This amounts to a total of 100 to 150 megawatts. All others would have to pay three times the tariff, which would be their economic ruin. The rapid calculations only have a prospect of profit if the electricity is really cheap.