[2018-08-07] Bitcoin Mining Giant Bitmain Has Big Plans for Small Texas Town

[BitcoinArsenal]

A sleepy Texas town is set to reinvigorate the local economy thanks to a multimillion-dollar project to build a cryptocurrency mining and data center in place of a recently closed coal fire power plant.
Full article on Bitcoinist

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[Kprawn]

What a weird location for a mining farm? The average temperature for Texas is very high, so why would you want to chose

that as a location for a Bitcoin mining farm? I can understand that they want to shift operations to a more Bitcoin friendly

environment, but Texas? What is the electricity cost or are they going to re-open the coal fire power plant to generate cheap

electricity for the mining farm? 

[InvoKing]

Who would have imagined that cryptocurrency mining would be the key to making a former coal mining town in America great again?

The author is trolling Trump  
But he has a shitty summary like all newspapers..
So this small town called Rockdale in Texas has some economic tWoubles after the closure of all its coal mines! So Bitmain decided to create 300-500 jobs for a population of 5,861. Ok now the location is an old aluminum smelter and not the closed coal fire power plant!
Don't bother to read the rest, the author ruins it already.

[Harlot]

They are taking advantage of the situation obviously in towns like this their local mayor will do whatever it takes to provide alternatives jobs to the ones who have lost one when the coal plants closed. The only problem I see here is will this unemployed population of the town be qualified for the job position in the Mining Plant? Because this will be their catch as I don't see any connection for a lot of people who previously worked at a coal plant to a Bitcoin mining center not unless they are looking for a white collar job. But for the mayor I don't see that he have much choice with this opportunity he might be out of options with this one.

[acheampong64]

Hmm...Everyone is now taking advantage of cryptocurrencies in every way they can and I think that's why they're opting for that. First, Bitmain wants to explore other crypto friendly areas- for sure they can't rely on China who's still not decisive about crypto mining, and second, the town also wants that intervention. But I also don't see how this will solve unemployment issues there. This is crypto mining farm- what jobs are available if you're not a "tech-endowed" one?
Anyways one other thing gaining my attention is that the USA might one day become the world's hub for blockchain and cryptos.

[BitHodler]

The only problem I see here is will this unemployed population of the town be qualified for the job position in the Mining Plant?

Of course not. Even if people are genuinely qualified, Bitmain will only end up employing a small percentage of what they promised to employ. Bitmain is just in it for the money, they don't care about the locals there.

The only question is how friendly will the local government there be if Bitmain doesn't live up to what it was expected to do initially. Will they let Bitmain keep operating or will they interfere and still force them to employ more people.

It's one thing for Bitmain to employ cheap Chinese workers, but it's another thing when it concerns American workers demanding far higher wages. We'll see what happens, but it likely won't end well.