Bitcoin mining is an energy business wearing a crypto costume, and that's exactly where its regulatory risk lives. FERC is actively litigating how "large co-located loads" — data centers and miners sitting behind the meter next to power plants — get to interconnect without destabilizing the grid (Docket No. ER24-2172, the PJM co-location proceeding). Texas's PUCT and ERCOT have separately built a whole regulatory apparatus (SB 6's large-load interconnection and curtailment rules) specifically because miners now represent gigawatts of interruptible demand concentrated in one grid. Layer on state-level "energy hog" surcharge proposals and sanctions-driven scrutiny of foreign-linked power and hosting arrangements, and the mechanism is simple: regulators are moving from "let miners buy whatever power they can find" to "miners must prove their power deals are transparent, curtailable, and U.S.-utility-anchored." That reclassifies power-sourcing strategy from an operating detail into a balance-sheet risk factor — and the two largest public miners sit on opposite sides of it.
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