Issues facing miners in Canada

The Manitoba government is looking to double electricity prices for crypto mining firms and data centers, claiming they're using too much energy and not bringing in enough economic benefit. They also want to have the power to cut electricity to these operations during peak times. This has sparked major backlash from mining operators who believe it could bankrupt many legit businesses. This isn't isolated; other provinces like Quebec have already hiked rates, and British Columbia has even put a stop to new mining connections to the grid. A 50% hike could mean quick bankruptcy, but a full 100% jump in electricity prices would be a death sentence for mining companies.

The main culprit behind this are the AI data centres because in everywhere they are, there is chance that the price of electricity in the community will increase even for all consumers, but Manitoba government just want the electricity bill for bitcoin miners or other crypto miners using ASIC and also AI data centres to increase. AI data centres need to have 24 hours electricity. I do not see a reason they want to increase the electricity for data centres and they still want to cut the electricity for them during peak period. Miners can still decide to reduce their work during the peak period but cutting their electricity during the period is also not good. But according to what I have heard in the past, miners prefer when the electricity are not used to access it with cheaper price.

How much hash is in Canada 10eh 20eh 50eh Anyone know the number?

Lots and lots in Quebec. I know of 2. I know there are more. These are older data centers here that have been emptying out even more now then they were due to newer and better ones coming online. The one that I work at has made some nice deals with mining operators so they are probably pushing out 1.5 MW of power to each of the 2nd +3rd + 4th + 5th floors that are just filled with miners. I know there is another location in close by that has 5MW of miners in it. This spot is very large and was very empty. Even in peak late 1990s .com time it was still too large. Can write for hours on that subject. Using less power for cooling since with the amount of empty space you can do a lot of cooling by just pulling in and moving cooler air. You can't cool a highly packed room with servers and routers or miners without using water cooling. When you have 1.5MW of power being used in an area that was designed for over 10MW of power you can get away with a lot. Using American measurements they have 300,000 square feet that was designed to be packed with servers and routers that needed to be cooled. The math is 300,000 square feet with 10 foot ceilings is 3,000,000 cubic feet. 6WM means you need about 600,000 CFM of air movement to keep things cool. Or you have to fully change out the air about as much as a modern casino. But, this is only working since they had very big empty data center buildings that were too big even at peak .com times that nobody was using even close to their full potential. And. They don't talk about it. No big signs or marketing. Just large private miners in what was otherwise massive empty spaces. I know they exist as do a lot of other people. But in the middle of a heavy industrial area no complaints come in about it. So probably lots of ehs of mining that nobody talks about.

Makes sense an yer first merit for that. I take it that these days the reason they are not becoming AI centers or mega server farms is the relatively simple one of not enough power available to feed them.... These days, especially with AI power loads thanks to liquid cooling they can easily exceed 72kw for just one rack (nvidia Blackwell series) equating to several 10's of MW or more per floor. In short, it is more cost effective to build new ones with the needed infra and power deals in place vs upgrading existing data centers to handle the massively increased power and cooling requirements.

yeah and if you have a prepaid contract for 2 or 3 years of a good amount of power it is easy to transfer it to an ai company at a markup as lots of energy brokers are in usa and Canada.

Well it seems like the government can't do some calculations then, because if they can they will know that mining isn't profitable like before, they should be easing miners pain instead of adding more pain, it's like they want all the miners in that country to quit mining, this is what happens when you rely on your government to keep getting things done, you won't know what they will bring to your doorstep tomorrow, government hates it when it's people are comfortable, they always bring inconvenience. Bitcoin mining is getting harder to becoming profitable as we speak, some people are already moving on from Bitcoin mining into data center AI operation, and now that this government is doing this to his people means that many more people will have to quit, this is also why investing slowly in a solar mining operation worth's it afterall.

You know what's scary?  Manitoba sits right beside one of the world's largest hydroelectric clusters (200 hydroelectric generation facilities with a total installed capacity of 9,264 MW)  It would be easier than most places to tap into that power across the geologically stable Canadian shield.  If they can't get the finances working there, good luck with less connected regions.   One good thing about Bitcoin was it helped prebuild the AI infrastructure.  .

AI company may accept higher electricity rate. But there's no way they'll accept the fact government can cut-off electricity to their server, it'll make their customer switch to different service since their service will be down or could be overloaded (assuming they have server on different location). If this proposal passed and become law, i can see miner shutdown and sell their infrastructure to AI company even at unfair price.

It can be assumed that the entire hashrate of Canada is 3-4% or 30-40 PetaHash https://coinshares.com/corp/insights/research-data/bitcoin-mining-report-q1-2026/ Canada has a relatively broad energy base overall, and most scenarios project an energy surplus. This is due to the high use of renewable energy sources and sufficient capacity. Projections indicate that increased export capacity will also contribute to maintaining the surplus. https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/canada-energy-future/2026/results/

It's probably more since they have power at decent costs along with a few other things. And as I say this as a US person. Humor: Never mind forced cooling, during the colder months you can cool a 10MW mining center just by leaving the front door open. :-) Drifting OT a bit but a lot of those reports that tell you where the has is coming from can only make certain assumptions. They know the IP address of where the miners are connecting from. Most people will tell you IP geolocation maps are highly accurate for identifying a user's country (95–99%) but significantly less precise for cities, typically ranging between 50–80% accuracy. BUT, when talking about larger mines with their own ASN https://www.arin.net/resources/guide/asn/ you usually only get the main corporate office. Taking the client that I used to service here in NY and now seems to be in @CoreRulezKnotsAreFulez part of the world and since I know their IPs anybody checking would think they are still in Texas. Multiply that across a bunch of businesses that may have corporate entities in location A but equipment in location B it becomes more difficult to be sure. Since they are not hosting websites or sending email or things like that being bothered to actually make the changes to get proper geolocations on their IPs is not on their to do list. Just my opinion, I could be wrong. But, I have seen many Canadian businesses with /23 or /22 blocks of IPs showing as in the US. -Dave

Aren't miners in Canada required to publish official reports on hashrate and consumption? American companies do this regularly. In Russia, probably more than half of the mining industry operates without registration and doesn't pay taxes, but what about unregistered mining in Canada? I thought reporting wasn't limited to IP addresses?

Making an *assumption* the client I had here in NY was (still kinda is) a Texas based company incorporated in Delaware. So they would probably report out of one of those 2 states. Probably a real legal grey area, but still I don't think they are really going to report everything everywhere. Ignoring the tax implication just the additional paperwork and accounting costs would probably be insane. Just easier to report it as an expense in Canada and the income of the BTC sales in the US. And once again, making an *assumption* about the DC that they are in the local area does not care since they are paying people salaries, paying the power company, paying the DC for space, and so on. If is was that empty is a local politician going to rock the boat? -Dave

I understand you have your own tax reduction schemes. When each state has different tax incentives, that could be quite interesting. In Russia, if a company mines in different regions, it registers branches in these regions and pays taxes on each branch separately. Do you have unregistered mining operations, or could that result in a hefty prison sentence and tax penalties?

Me? I have a couple of miners I use for space heaters, been out of the mining game for a while. I was just pointing out that when you have data centers that are empty, since so many businesses moved to AWS or similar. Now when some smaller miners comes in they stop caring once they get their monthly rent. Local politicians stop caring once they can say they are doing something to grow the local economy. No, you can't hide a 50MW farm. But smaller farms in places that have the power and space and whatever else that are in industrial areas that need people / business / revenue to come in. There are probably a lot of them. Not just in Canada, but everyplace. Neither Canada or the US are going to put people in jail. But, they will probably fine you. However, then the local economy suffers so how many places will just look away. -Dave

That doesn't seem like a good idea...  Some countries cannot resist cooking and eating their golden goose... A shame because the cold weather and cheap electricity was a huge draw to the area for miners and datacenters.  Who knows what complex issues are forcing this, but at first glance from an outsider it seems like a bad idea.

As far as I know no reporting requirements exist to report mining. If they do it is either not talked about or for larger mines or for new construction or nobody does it or they just do it and do not talk about it. TBF that is also not what I deal with so long as the network routes my job is done for the day. I have had 4 jobs in different data centers over the years, and have spoken to many people who were mining in them and nobody ever mentioned reporting what they do. So perhaps someone in an office someplace is doing it all and it never filters down to our level.

50 megawatts is a lot to hide, but miners typically take excess electricity from manufacturing plants, which receive substantial government subsidies. A miner can use up to a couple of megawatts and remain undetected. We had a high-profile criminal case in which local executives of an electric transport company engaged in mining at their workplace

If you are consuming more electricity you will pay more, in some countries what they use is prepaid meter, in the major cities in my country they use it too and when you pay for electricity the many electrical appliances you use that is how your electricity will reduce and when you exhaust it then it will turn off you won’t have electricity again until you recharge or pay again, if the appliances or things you are using in your house, consume electricity a lot it means you have to recharge or pay huge amount of money in order to sustain it for sometime. You cannot pay the same amount with someone with less appliances or things that consume electricity. Electricity is the key of mining and if you don’t have it you can’t min and the higher the price the little amount you benefit from mining. I believe a lot of miners will stop mining over their because of this news.

But that example is out and out theft / misappropriation of electricity and / or abuse of government subsidies. What I and @CoreRulez are talking about are data centers that are trying to stay in business by leasing space to miners instead of leasing to Dave & FP91G web & email hosting. In the end the center gets to stay in business and are actually using less power & water then what they would do if they were packed to the walls with Cisco routers. No, you can't hide 50MW of mining at 1 location. But, you could easily hide 7.5MW of mining per data center at 6 data centers. Now, I don't know Canadian data center usage. Are there 6 in the area that have that much empty space? Could be. I can tell you that there are plenty of places in the US that have a lot of big ones that do. Many were built 30+ years ago with others in the 25+ years ago range and are now sitting there with tons of available power and space. Some may or may not be anti-mining. Others will take your money and not ask questions. It's that or knock the building down and put something else in. The way they are built has changed, the way things are cooled has changed. What works for servers. Will not work well for miners but you can get it to work if you are willing to loose usable space. But, it not work for AI without a lot more compromises. Case in point, the DC where my client was that moved a lot of their equipment to Canada had 150,000SQF and 25MW all of which was PACKED to the walls during the late 90s with routers and servers. When they left they were one of the last customers standing so to speak as that DC was shutting down. That DC was cheaper and more convenient to a lot of people. But, clients moved hosting to the cloud and you now can do more data processing with 1 rack of servers then you could do with 10 racks 10 years ago. High speed fiber is now everywhere. If all you need is a /24 of IPs and one equipment rack. Why put it in a DC if you are already leasing office space. So these DCs fail. Or rent to miners. We can probably go around and around with this discussion. But at the end of the day it comes down to business and what will work for each individual DC. -Dave