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The World’s Biggest Bitcoin Mine Is Rattling This Texas Oil Town

A cash-strapped city in rural Texas will soon be home to the world’s largest bitcoin mine. Local protesters are “raising hell.”

But in Republican Navarro County, where environmental arguments hold little sway, Sawicky focuses her campaigning on the potential for the Riot facility to produce disruptive noise, pull from local water resources, and strain the power grid. As for concerns about noise—which have cropped up repeatedly in Texas and beyond, as bitcoin mining companies put down roots in the US countryside—Morgenstern says Riot has built its Corsicana facility to support a new and far quieter type of cooling system: liquid immersion. The sisters rarely see eye-to-eye on political issues: Sawicky considers herself a liberal progressive, whereas Conrad describes herself as a “constitutional conservative, bordering on libertarian.” Yet they find common ground in a shared animus for the bitcoin mining industry.

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