Exposing Bitmain/Allrise misinformation about Box Canyon Dam and the Paper Mill

Ever since Beijing's Bitmain and Allrise Capital discovered last August they could not make a profit running their bitcoin machines on regional market power, they have been trying to trick the citizens of Pend Oreille County to subsidize their exploitative crypto mining operations by claiming that, in return for county residents effectively paying millions of dollars of their power bill, they would restart the former Ponderay Newsprint Company paper mill. 

As we have previously reported, it is unlikely that they have either the desire or ability to restart the mill. See PROTECT PEND OREILLE - Home

One of the several ways that they want to get residents of Pend Oreille County to pay for their power is by turning over the clean energy produced by our PUD's Box Canyon Dam to them (at a steep discount). This would not only cost the residents of Pend Oreille County millions of dollars each year, it would also do nothing to reduce the price of electricity for papermaking. What it would do is reduce the average price of electricity for Beijing's bitcoin mining.

Let's look at why. 

Suppose our PUD surrendered to Beijing Bitmain's/Allrise's demands to make the power available to them. What would happen?

First, our PUD would have to get out of its lucrative contracts with Shell Energy and Clark County PUD for the output of Box Canyon. The Clark County deal is worth up to $400 million over the next two decades, is extremely beneficial to the residents and businesses in the county and is such a good deal that Moody's raised our PUD's bond rating after the deal was signed last October.  Because Clark County PUD is willing to pay more for the clean energy attributes of Box power than Bitmain/Allrise, this would cost our PUD millions of dollars each year in lost revenue that residents and business would have to make up for by paying higher power rates. (NOTE: Bitmain/Allrise was offered the opportunity to bid for the Dam's output, but they admitted to our PUD that they couldn't afford it.) 

Second, the Box Canyon dam produces an average of 50 MW of power (more when the river is high, less when it is low). That is not enough power to run either the paper mill or the Bitmain/Allrise bitcoin mining facility, let alone both of them. Although the dam previously provided some of the power required by the mill when it was operating, it rarely provided enough power to run the mill without additional power from other sources. 

But getting Box Canyon would do a lot to reduce Beijing's average power bills. The following chart shows the average daily market price of power in our area. The red line shows the average trend price. The green line shows the production cost of Box Canyon power. This graph clearly shows why Bitmain/Allrise are interested in Box Canyon. 

Ask this question to yourself: would Bitmain/Allrise use its cheapest power for a failing paper mill or its main business of feeding its bitcoin miners and increasing its crypto revenue? One of the three main reasons Bitmain/Allrise's bitcoin mine is losing money is that their power prices are much higher than they expected. The assertion that Bitmain and Allrise would want to use their already financially failing bitcoin mining to subsidize another failing business is not reasonable. See more one the Usk facility's economics here: POC Cryptonomics - PROTECT PEND OREILLE

I think we can safely say that Box Canyon power would be used to subsidize bitcoin mining, not paper making.