The Largest Bitcoin Mining Facility in the World Is Coming to Navarro County. Not Everyone Wants It

Ever since a new Bitcoin mining facility was proposed in Navarro County, some residents have been upset about the drain on local resources they say the operation would cause.

In April, the Colorado company Riot Blockchain announced in a press release that it was in the process of developing a large-scale, 1 gigawatt facility just outside Navarro County’s Corsicana, about an hour's drive south of Dallas. The first phase of the project will include 400 megawatts of capacity on a 265-acre site, according to the company’s press release.

That phase is expected to be completed in July 2023. Once that’s finished, Riot Blockchain will work on expanding the facility to its total potential capacity, 1 gigawatt. That’s just a little less power than what Doc Brown and Marty McFly needed in Back to the Future to power the flux capacitor in their DeLorean and get Marty back home to 1985 (or enough to power 300,000 to 1 million U.S. homes).

When it’s all said and done, the project could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and create hundreds of jobs. But, it will also consume a lot of electricity and, potentially, a lot of water in a state that has experienced an unstable power grid and is currently in a drought.

Read more: https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/the-largest-bitcoin-mining-facility-in-the-world-is-being-built-in-texas-residents-are-fighting-back-14493090