The world’s largest Bitcoin mining pool, Foundry USA, slashed its hashrate by approximately 60% this weekend as Winter Storm Fern hammered the North American power grid. The curtailment erased nearly 200 exahashes per second (EH/s) from the network, a drop roughly equivalent to the entire global hashrate of 2022. Yet Bitcoin’s price remained resilient, hovering at $89,119 (-0.8%).
The Curtailment Receipt
Real-time data from mempool.space and The Miner Mag confirmed the cliff-edge drop. Foundry’s hashrate slid from peak capacity to approximately 198 EH/s as the storm intensified across the U.S. South and Midwest.
Competitor Luxor Mining Pool mirrored the move, powering down roughly 40% of its fleet (from ~45 EH/s to ~26 EH/s). The coordinated power-down is not a failure; it is a feature of the modern mining contract known as "demand response."
Miners are the backbone of the grid’s emergency braking system. When ‘Fern’ hit, we didn’t crash. We yielded.
Grid Stabilization as the New Standard
As AccuWeather forecasts ‘Fern’ to stretch 1,800 miles with icing risks, grid operators like ERCOT (Texas) have leaned heavily on miners’ flexibility. Unlike steel mills or hospitals, ASIC fleets can sever gigawatt-loads in seconds, freeing up capacity for heating homes without destabilizing the frequency.
Despite the massive offline event, Foundry USA retains a commanding 23% of the global hashrate, illustrating the sheer scale of U.S. institutional mining dominance. Block production slowed briefly to 12 minutes but has since stabilized as the difficulty adjustment algorithm absorbs the shock.
