Major U.S. Bitcoin (BTC) mining pools have sharply reduced operations as an Arctic winter storm strains electricity grids across the country, with Foundry USA and Luxor collectively cutting more than 110 exahashes per second of hashrate in late January 2026.
What Happened: Mining Operations Curtailed
The world's largest Bitcoin mining pool, Foundry USA, saw its hashrate plunge from nearly 340 EH/s to around 242 EH/s late last week, according to TheMinerMag. Luxor recorded a drop from roughly 45 EH/s to 26 EH/s.
Smaller declines were also observed at Antpool and Binance Pool.
"Bitcoin hashrate on FoundryUSA alone is down by nearly 200 EH/s, or 60%, since Friday amid continued curtailment," TheMinerMag reported. "Temporary block production has slowed down to 12 minutes."
Data from Hashrate Index shows Foundry now controls approximately 163.5 EH/s of hashing power, representing about 22.59% of the total network hashrate. Luxor's share has fallen to 3.01%, with roughly 21.9 EH/s.
The severe Arctic freeze has brought snow, ice and extreme cold across large parts of the United States, sharply increasing heating demand. According to the ABC News, the winter storm has left at least three people dead and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes, more than 200M Americans affected.
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Why It Matters: Grid Flexibility Tested
Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, pointed to the role Bitcoin miners can play in easing grid strain during extreme weather events.
"Tragic that 1M+ Americans are without power due to the winter storm impacting the eastern US," he said. "Some public bitcoin miners have meaningful capacity in or near affected regions, and several such as CLSK, RIOT, BTDR and others are structurally set up to act as flexible loads via utility demand response programs."
The hashrate downturn comes as miner reserves fell to their lowest level since 2010 in January 2026. Subdued Bitcoin prices and rising energy costs are squeezing margins.
Electricity prices reached a record 18.07 cents per kilowatt-hour in September 2025, up 10.5% since January of that year. Some operators, including Bitfarms, have begun reallocating resources toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.
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