Comment by jcranmer

Doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations, it seems that a power company would make more money selling wholesale power to the open market in ERCOT than it would mining bitcoin.

The simple fact of the matter is Texas does not have sufficient electrical generation capacity to satiate its demands, especially given the record spate of hot days (it's been daily highs above 100F in Austin for two months). There's no need to add extra sources of demand to encourage new supply.