The largest bitcoin mine in the world is located in a small, poor village. At least, that is the vision of the future for this suburban village in Texas, United States.

Corsicana, the capital of Navarro County, was originally famous for the Texas oil boom in 1894. Initially, a 1,000-foot deep well was dug to address the water shortage in the area, but it turned out to produce an extensive oil field.


In the following century, tens of millions of barrels of oil were extracted from the city, and Corsicana became wealthy.

However, currently, only one or two thousand barrels are extracted each year. Nearly one-sixth of the 24,000 people living in Corsicana are below the poverty line, far above the national average in the US.

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The city streets are full of potholes. Some neighborhoods are filled with dilapidated wooden shacks and large trees that weigh down the power lines.

Even the tree-lined highways in the historic district are filled with boarded-up buildings.

Now, on a 265-acre plot of land, the construction of a giant bitcoin mining facility is underway.

Citing The Wired, this facility is owned by Riot Platforms, a publicly traded cryptocurrency mining company. They intend to develop it into the largest bitcoin mine in the world.

The drying up of the oil fields made local officials feel they had found a new source of money through the construction of a bitcoin mine.

However, unfortunately, some residents of Corsicana are not so sure about the plan. They see the bitcoin mining facility as a threat to their property values, a vulnerable energy grid, and incompatible with the peaceful rural lifestyle.

The dissenting villagers then agreed to resist. In April 2022, Jackie Sawicky, one of the villagers, accidentally stumbled upon a Facebook live stream hosted by the city government of Corsicana. In that broadcast, they announced plans for the Riot mine.

The goal is to expand the local tax base and provide jobs for the community in the area.

"This will stimulate economic growth, which will benefit all of us who live here," said John Boswell, the economic development director for Corsicana and Navarro County.

Julia is not sure about the plan. Because she is scared of Riot's vision, Sawicky created a Facebook group to coordinate protests from the residents.

In a week, hundreds of people have joined. Although only a handful of members attend each monthly Zoom meeting and scheduled protests, the online group now has 800 members.

Bitcoin mining itself requires special energy-intensive hardware to have a chance at earning.

The construction of the Corsicana facility is planned to continue gradually, but last April, Riot began connecting computers online for the first time.

Once completed, the facility will draw up to one gigawatt of energy at any given time, enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes.