In Brief:
- Bitdeer, a subsidiary of Chinese bitcoin mining giant Bitmain, is located four-tenths of a mile away from Riot Blockchain.
- Both are occupants of a facility previously occupied by aluminum manufacturer Alcoa.
- About 40 inquiries from mining companies wanting to set up in Rockdale.
In a small Texas town called Rockdale, Bitcoin mining companies Bitdeer and Riot Blockchain are competing for cheap electricity.
Bitdeer, a subsidiary of Chinese giant Bitmain, and Riot Blockchain, one of the leading publicly traded Bitcoin mining firms in the United States, both run data centers in Rockdale, Texas, at a former aluminum smelting facility.
Rockdale has 160 acres available for purchase. According to reports, the town’s Mayor has dealt with 40 inquiries from mining companies mostly from China, interested in establishing themselves in Rockdale.
Rockdale has a population of only 5,600 people. It provides all of the advantages the industrial-scale miners are looking for, such as crypto-friendly politicians, large plots of land with abandoned industrial infrastructure ready for repurposing, and dirt-cheap electricity prices due to Texas’ deregulated market.
Alcoa, the world’s largest aluminum smelting plant, was located in Rockdale, and it shut down in 2008. The energy capacity was going to waste until the miners arrived and balanced it out.
Rockdale Mayor John King describes the mutually beneficial relationship between the local grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), and miners.
“Miners are committed to buying a certain amount of power and what they do is they sell it back at market [value] and make a profit. They have a contract of two cents or three cents…and they can sell it for $9 a kilowatt hour,” the Mayor stated.
Recently the National Association of Blockchain and Data Center Industry(NABDC) reported that Kazakhstan’s crypto mining industry can pull a massive $1.5 billion into the nation’s economy in five years, resulting in over $300 million.
