Has Quebec Missed the Ship for Attracting Cryptocurrency Miners?

The results of a 300 megawatt energy allocation for cryptocurrency miners, run by Canadian provincial utility provider Hydro-Québec, has failed to attract expected demand from the local industry.

A Request for Proposals for power allocation was opened in June last year, supposedly based on huge demand of around 16,000MW from miners around the world that wanted to take advantage of Quebec's hydroelectric power.

According to a Jan. 22 report from Radio Canada, the results of the RFP or only released recently with Hydro-Québec granting one-fifth of total block set aside for crypto mining.

A long and winding road. As Cointelegraph has reported, Quebec's path to eventual acceptance of cryptocurrency mining has been a rocky one.

Initially, back in March 2018, local authorities said that they were "Not interested" in attracting mining businesses to the province, unless they could provide some "Added value."

By May of that year, the Quebec government had supposedly lifted its moratorium on energy sales to cryptocurrency miners, eager to "Avoid missing the ship."

Just a week later, Hydro-Québec once again stopped processing requests for mining power after receiving an unprecedented demand, which reportedly threatened to disrupt its energy obligations for the rest of the province.

Instead, the provincial power regulator Régie de l'énergie ruled to reserve a 300MW block for crypto mining.

"During the Quebec Energy Board hearings in June 2018, Hydro-Québec stated that they received more than 16,000MW equivalent of demand for Bitcoin mining to date. That number was completely debunked by invited Bitcoin miners and experts. Hydro-Québec finally admitted that the"serious" demand was somewhere around 1,000MW.".

"The numbers are clear: miners simply went elsewhere on the planet and Quebec lost hundreds of millions in potential energy revenue."