The bitcoinization of Texas is one step closer. The Texas Pacific Land Corporation, Mawson Infrastructure, and JAI Energy partnered to build a facility that guarantees “60 megawatts of bitcoin mining on TPL’s surface in West Texas.” Using today’s hardware, it “could accommodate up to 2.0 Exahash of Bitcoin mining operational capacity.” The operation will be fast. The three giants plan to start construction in Q2 2022 and start mining bitcoin as soon as Q4 2022.

Related Reading | Texas Congressman Pushes For Bitcoin Mining To Make US ‘Energy Independent’

As for the three companies, the Texas Pacific Land Corporation “is one of the largest landowners in the State of Texas with approximately 880,000 acres of land.” For its part, “Mawson matches sustainable energy infrastructure with next-generation mobile data centre (MDC) solutions, enabling low-cost Bitcoin production and on-demand deployment of infrastructure assets.” As for JAI Energy, it “was formed specifically to mine and provide Bitcoin mining services for applications involving stranded, flared, and poor economic natural gas streams.”

The facility “will be owned and operated by Mawson.” All of the information, claims, and quotes come from this press release.

Choice Quotes About The Project

All the quotes presented in the press release have two factors in common: the emergence of Texas as a mining capital and the merger of bitcoin and the energy sector. A phenomenon that’s booming in Texas. Mawson’s CEO James Manning said:

“Texas is rapidly emerging as an attractive new Bitcoin mining destination in the United States, and we are eager to establish a foothold in the state.”

For his part, the CEO of the Texas Pacific Land Corporation, Tyler Glover was more enthusiastic:

“This project marks the beginning of TPL’s journey into bitcoin, and we are fortunate to collaborate with Mawson and JAI as two highly regarded companies in the bitcoin mining industry. We believe TPL’s extensive surface footprint in West Texas can serve as a premier destination for the bitcoin mining industry.”

The founding partner of JAI Energy,  Justin Ballard, was the more forthcoming and communicative of the three:

“We’re thrilled to join with TPL and Mawson to bring bitcoin mining to Texas. As a former long-time professional in the oil and gas industry, I believe that bitcoin can serve as a great complement to the oil patch and together achieve success (…) JAI Energy strives to educate energy companies and landowners on the benefits that Bitcoin mining can bring, and we applaud TPL for being a leader and jumping at the opportunity to enter this emerging industry.”

BTC price chart for 05/16/2022 on Coinbase | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com

Bitcoin And Energy Merge In Texas

There’s something going on in Texas. In a recent What Bitcoin Did episode titled “Texas is bitcoin country,” the podcast described the situation in the accompanying text:

“From very early in its history, a strong community of maximalists united and sought to safeguard Bitcoin in this part of the US. That effort is now starting to pay off. The strong affinity for Bitcoin by Texans has evolved such that the state is fast becoming the centre of groundbreaking efforts to integrate Bitcoin and energy grids.

The state is arguably spearheading a new adoption wave within the US that includes serious politicians.”

They also quote Will Cole, the episode’s guest, with a related phrase:

“What’s the end game? It is honestly to do less harm. Bitcoin doesn’t actually need politicians to make it succeed, it will succeed on its own merits; what would be helpful is to not have people actively attacking it and elongating the inevitable collapse of their own currencies, but also rise of Bitcoin as a global reserve currency.”

Related Reading | Texas, The Citadel For Bitcoin: A Gubernatorial Election Race

However, Texas’ bitcoin hash power absorption is not as rosy as it sounds. Security expert Brian Trollz, AKA Shinobi, doesn’t see it as a positive development for the bitcoin network and his reasons make sense. “Rapid growth of Bitcoin mining in the United States/North America without a proportional growth of mining in other jurisdictions is not good for Bitcoin. In fact, it’s actively bad for it.” What do you think?