Over the past year or so, the state of Texas has become one of the go-to regions for people looking to either establish new crypto mining projects or continue what they’ve already started. Several months later, it doesn’t look like that trend is ending anytime soon.
Texas Is Still a Mining Powerhouse
Things began in the summer of 2021 after China announced it was going to end all crypto mining projects and dub them illegal. The news was shocking given the country hosted nearly three quarters of the world’s digital asset mining, but the county didn’t care about all the revenue and power it was going to lose by making everything illicit. China wanted to become more carbon neutral.
This forced many players in the Chinese crypto industry to find new regions to travel to if they wanted to stay in business. Texas seemed like a great place given the state offered low electricity costs. They could keep their operations up for a fraction of the price and continue to extract new units of BTC and other assets from the blockchain.
Many headed to the Lone Star state and established businesses and jobs and helped its economy reach a new pinnacle. What’s interesting is that many of these miners did not transfer over to large states such as Austin or Dallas. Rather, they chose to set up their shops in smaller, more rural towns.
Mitchell Ferman – a reporter within the state – believes this is happening because these regions offer loads of unclaimed land that can be used to develop large warehouses that people can use to house their mining rigs and equipment. In an interview, he stated:
We’ve seen major urban areas grow a lot, and so these crypto companies are seeing that there are vast amounts of land and opportunity to grow in rural Texas.
While things have been positive, the amount of new energy flowing out of the Texas electricity grid and into these mining projects has caused serious problems for the Lone Star state, which according to regulators within the region, is suffering from an energy crisis that has caused blackouts and other issues.
Ferman commented on this as well, saying:
Energy regulators and others who pay close attention to the grid say that the grid is not just going to allow these major industrial sites to connect if there is no sufficient power supply available.
Miners Are Cooperating
The good news is that many crypto miners are beginning to cooperate heavily with regulators. They don’t want to run the risk of not being able to operate in the future, so they are able and willing to turn off their machines whenever they receive notices that things are not looking good.
This gives Texas time to revamp itself, and they can continue their projects in the future.
