B.C. Bans Bitcoin Mining: A Tragicomic Energy Tale 🌱💸

by

Canada’s British Columbia, that frost-kissed realm of pine-scented breezes and hydroelectric odes to progress, has resolved to snuff out the flickering candle of new Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining operations with the bureaucratic precision of a Victorian housemaid extinguishing gaslights. One imagines the bureaucrats sipping their Earl Grey, muttering about “energy efficiency” as they pen the death warrant of digital gold.

British Columbia To Ban New Crypto Mining Grid Connections Permanently

The Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions, that paragon of modernity, has decreed that by Fall 2025, the grid shall no longer be a hospitable host to Bitcoin’s greedy algorithms. Regulatory changes, they claim, will ensure electricity flows only to industries that “produce jobs” and “decarbonize”-a sardonic nod to the oxymoron of “green” mining, perhaps?

BC Hydro, the province’s electricity distributor (a name as poetic as a tax bill), will now ration its power like a miser counting coins. Data centers and AI, those modern-day oracles of wisdom, will receive a paltry 300 MW, while cryptocurrency miners-those quixotic alchemists of the 21st century-are cast into the shadows, their rigs silenced by the ghost of Thomas Malthus.

The ministry’s rationale? To prioritize sectors that “generate public revenues”-a euphemism for industries that don’t make politicians squirm. One can almost hear the whisper of hydroelectric turbines sighing in relief, spared from the voracious maw of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work rituals.

New mining connections have been on ice since 2022, a suspension initially framed as a temporary “energy diet.” But like a dieter who forgets what “temporary” means, the province extended the ban thrice, until December 2025, when it realized the jig was up and made it permanent. A masterstroke of indecision, if ever there was one.

In early 2026, BC Hydro will host a beauty contest for industries, doling out power like a Victorian dowager distributing alms. AI gets 300 MW, data centers 100 MW, and hydrogen exports… well, let’s not dwell on the bureaucratic limbo of that allocation. The market, that fickle oracle, will decide.

British Columbia isn’t alone in this crypto-crusade. Laos, that Southeast Asian enigma, plans to ditch Bitcoin mining by Q1 2026, redirecting energy to AI and electric vehicles. Meanwhile, Brazil’s miners, ever the pragmatists, are striking deals to harness renewable surpluses, while Tether’s foray into Brazilian biomass-powered mining reads like a dystopian rom-com: love at first kWh.

Bitcoin Price

Bitcoin, that capricious lover of markets, has retreated to $108,600, its price chart a jagged sonnet of greed and despair. Perhaps it’s mourning the loss of B.C.’s hydroelectric embrace-or simply calculating when to strike back. Only time, that relentless miner of truths, will tell.

Read More

2025-10-22 09:24