There's a line in the song Big Yellow Taxi goes "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." In Sept 2024, Norwegian residents found that out the hard way, discovering too late that Bitcoin mining had for years been keeping their power prices 20% lower. When a Bitcoin mining operation left the grid, local power company Noranett instantly increased prices to residents, to compensate for the revenue shortfall. The news was covered by government state owned media organization NRK (analogous to BBC) Bitcoin mining has been found in multiple studies to be able to use energy that would otherwise be wasted, which contributes to lower electricity bills. This is one of a number of cases where Bitcoin mining has direct lowered electricity prices. I'll be sharing some other documented cases this week.(Daniel Batten)