Texas has taken another step toward bitcoinization. Texas Pacific Land Corporation, Mawson Infrastructure, and JAI Energy have teamed up to construct a facility that would ensure “60 megawatts of bitcoin mining on TPL’s surface in West Texas.” It “could fit up to 2.0 Exahash of Bitcoin mining operating capacity” with today’s hardware. The operation will be completed shortly. The three giants want to begin construction in Q2 2022 and begin mining bitcoin in Q4 2022.
The Texas Pacific Land Corporation, with approximately 880,000 acres of land, is “one of the biggest landowners in the State of Texas.” According to the company, “Mawson matches sustainable energy infrastructure with next-generation mobile data centre (MDC) technologies, allowing low-cost Bitcoin production and on-demand infrastructure asset deployment.” JAI Energy, on the other hand, “was founded particularly to mine and supply Bitcoin mining services for applications utilising stranded, flared, and low-value natural gas streams.”
All of the quotes in the press release have two things in common: Texas’s rise as a mining hub and the merger of bitcoin with the energy industry.
However, Texas’ absorption of bitcoin hash power is not as bright as it seems. Brian Trollz, AKA Shinobi, a security expert, does not view it as a positive development for the bitcoin network, and his reasoning makes sense. “Rapid expansion of Bitcoin mining in the United States and North America without corresponding development in other countries is not good for Bitcoin.”
