Ted Cruz says Bitcoin will stabilize Texas electric grid–here’s why he’s wrong

The author makes 2 arguments, one is correct, the other is wrong. 1) the infrastructure built for bitcoin wouldn't necessarily be weatherized, which was why much of it failed earlier this year. True. 2) Texas has a system to change market prices for wholesale electricity, so price scales up when demand is high / supply is low. Author seems to know this but comes to the wrong conclusion. Most/residents businesses choose flat rate pricing so demand doesn't drop when supply does. BTC miners would absolutely choose variable pricing (which is cheaper most of the time, and reduce mining when prices spike, freeing up that power for the essential parts of the grid.

Sounds exactly like Balaji Srinivasan idea

I don’t like Ted Cruz, but he might be right about this. The article makes a model with today’s prices, which are hard to validate — I suspect if we start mining at grid level energies it is going other places… The economic incentives are clear and have not changed since 2009. What may happen is what was predicted many years ago.