Welcome back! This is Canaan's weekly newsletter on Bitcoin mining, energy, and compute infrastructure.
 

On September 16, the House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act 417 to 3. Margins like that are rare on anything touching energy, and rarer still on data centers. However, on September 30, the Senate failed to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed, 57–43.

https://x.com/StephenMoore/status/2105778028852732348

The bill is short. It asks state regulators to consider a standard under which any site drawing 100 MW or more to run computing infrastructure pays the full incremental cost of the generation, transmission, and distribution upgrades it triggers, and posts financial assurances before the utility builds. State regulators would have one year to start reviewing the standard and two years to decide whether to adopt it. Nothing forces them to say yes. Bill text here.
 

Supporters frame it as fairness. "If you create the cost, you should pay the cost," said Senator Jon Husted of Ohio, who is carrying it in the Senate. The White House has said it strongly supports passage, the National Association of Counties has endorsed it, and Microsoft and Google backed an earlier version. The politics explain the margin: a September New York Times/Siena poll found 61% of likely voters oppose new data center construction.
 

Opposition comes from two directions. One side says the bill is too soft. When Husted sought fast passage on September 17, Senator Martin Heinrich objected, arguing that asking states to consider a standard is not enough and that Congress needs legislation "with real teeth." His alternative, the GRID Savings Act, would make the obligation mandatory. Senator Bernie Moreno blocked that one. Food & Water Watch went further, saying the bill is "posing as a consumer protection measure."

https://x.com/SenatorHeinrich/status/2100963556086657520

The other side says it is too narrow. After the committee cut the scope from any 100 MW load to data centers only, the Data Center Coalition's Josh Levi said the change would "single out the data center industry" while leaving households exposed to load growth from other sectors. Steel and industrial energy buyers welcomed the same change.
 

Both camps are arguing about who pays. The text never mentions interruptible service, curtailment, or demand response. A 100 MW campus running flat around the clock and a 100 MW site that drops to zero at the summer peak are, under the standard, the same customer.
 

That matters because the upgrades being paid for are sized to peaks. Duke University's Nicholas Institute estimated that the US grid could absorb 76 GW of new load if those loads curtailed 0.25% of the time, and 126 GW at 1%. The day the House voted, Nvidia, Google and Emerald AI launched the AI Energy Management Alliance, with Anthropic, National Grid, Constellation and NRG among its members, to win faster interconnection for data centers that commit to flexibility and to account for the upgrades they avoid.

https://x.com/vsiv/status/2100252395921907965

So two lines are being drawn at once. Congress is drawing one on size. Part of the industry is drawing one on behavior.
 

Bitcoin mining sits between them. And they can shut down within minutes and come back just as quickly, during critical situations such as heat waves. The bill does not mention mining, but could its definition of computing infrastructure plausibly reach a 100 MW mine? Below 100 MW, there might be no changes, which would leave smaller distributed sites, and the household-scale compute NG Zhang argued for in a recent op-ed, outside the bill entirely.
 

The federal bill has stalled in the Senate. The argument will not, because the real decisions sit in state commissions. The question there is no longer whether large loads should pay their way. It is whether a load that can get out of the way gets credit for it.

In the News

• Binance to Shut Mining Pool After Years of Market Share Losses

• Cipher Digital Plans $850 Million Convertible Sale to Fund Data Centers

• IREN Rises Overnight After Report of Anthropic AI Cloud Deal

• SWI Raises €800M to Fund AI Push After Genesis Digital Takeover

• CleanSpark to End Monthly Mining Updates as Data Center Business Expands

• Microsoft to scale in-house 'Maia chips' to multi-gigawatt deployments from 2027

• Oracle trucks natural gas to data centers to bridge pipeline delays

• JPMorgan downgrades Applied Digital's project bonds, citing supply overhang

Network at a Glance

• BTC price (USD): ~$81,667

• Network hashrate: 1007 EH/s

• Difficulty: 132.7T

• Hashprice: ~$38.95 / PH / day

Project Spotlight

The A1446 was the entry point to Canaan's A14 series, launched in September 2023 alongside the A1466 and the immersion-cooled A1466I. It was the series workhorse: air-cooled, two fans, about 135 TH/s from roughly 3,310 W.

https://x.com/canaanio/status/1735810166443168083

Three years on, it is also a good example of the load this week's lead feature describes. Newer fleets get the headlines for efficiency. Machines like the A1446 are the reason mining can step aside when the grid needs it to: they run when power is cheap and can stop when it isn't.

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Disclaimer: This newsletter shares industry commentary and third-party news for informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by third-party sources are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Canaan Inc.  For official news, please refer to Canaan’s press releases and SEC filings at https://investor.canaan-creative.com/.