U.S. Winter Storm Causes Mining Farms to Decrease Load, Largest Network Hashrate Pool Foundry's Hashrate Drops by 60%

Jan. 26 (The Block) — A winter storm battering the U.S. has sharply cut Bitcoin mining activity, knocking a large chunk of the network’s hash rate offline. Mining operators proactively reduced electricity use to ease strain on the power grid. Dubbed Fernan, the storm has dumped extreme cold, snow and freezing conditions across most of the U.S., leaving over 1 million residents without power. Grid operators issued energy-saving alerts in response. Foundry USA — the network’s largest mining pool — has seen its connected hash rate drop ~60% since Friday. Data from miningpoolstats.stream shows its hash rate fell from a recent peak of ~328 EH/s to ~139 EH/s. Foundry holds roughly 23% of the global mining pool hash rate market share. Roughly 200 EH/s of network hash rate is offline, pushing average Bitcoin block time above the protocol’s 10-minute target. Mempool data puts average block time at ~12.4 minutes. The next mining difficulty adjustment is expected to drop 15% — a built-in mechanism to reset block production speed after a sustained hash rate dip. Other U.S.-based pools have also been hit. Luxor (a top North American pool) saw its hash rate fall from ~45 EH/s to ~26 EH/s. Antpool and Binance Pool posted small hash rate drops, suggesting total network cuts could exceed 110 EH/s (even with lower U.S. exposure for these pools).