[michael_vo]

Or, they could have implemented surge pricing and charged 10x, 100x for electricity during high demand for non-essential businesses and let market forces decide who wants to still use electricity.

Some lobbyists must have lined some pockets.

[crote]

That is basically exactly what is happening here, though. A bitcoin business considers itself non-essential and gives up power availability for a lower electricity price.

The issue with "pure" surge pricing is that it doesn't solve the actual problem. Most businesses - even "non-essential" ones will have fixed-price electricity contracts. They are not affected by surge pricing on the electricity market and have zero incentive to reduce their usage even when the market price spikes 100x.

In practice the "market forces" here are a bunch of Wall Street investors losing a shitton of money because their bets went sideways, but that is not going to fix the grid itself.