CleanSpark, a Nevada-based Bitcoin miner, has just signed a new agreement to expand its mining power and reach the Lone Star State.
CleanSpark is a Nevada-based software company and Bitcoin mining company. Through an agreement with Texas energy company Lancium, it will add up to 500 megawatts of mining power to its operations.
The mining company trades on Nasdaq as the CLSK ticker. It expects to have 50MW of Texas expansion up and running by the end this year, and another 150MW by the spring 2023.
The agreement allows for the addition of 300 MW but no dates are given.
CleanSpark will expand into Texas with 20,000 Bitmain S19 miners and 20 million exahash (EH/s) of mining capacity.
EH/s measures the amount of computational power used in a blockchain network. The current total hashrate of the entire Bitcoin network is 203.9 millions T/s (or 203.9 EH/s).
CleanSpark’s growth represents a tenfold increase in its mining capacity since February. However, it is only a small portion of the overall Bitcoin network’s mining activity.
“This is consistent with our strategy to focus on infrastructure first. CleanSpark CEO Zach Bradford said that while we continue to increase our capacity at our Bitcoin mining facilities, we also partner with colocation services providers. “This hybrid approach allows us to ensure that we always have rackspace available to deploy new machines once they are delivered by the manufacturers.”
The company also has two mining operations in Georgia. It is also co-located at Massena’s Coinmint facility, formerly Alcoa’s aluminum smelter. It is one of the growing number of crypto mining companies to establish operations in Texas.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott made it a key part of his reelection campaign to attract more Bitcoin companies. He’s not only interested in miners.
“Texas will become a crypto leader,” Abbot said on Twitter last January, “H-E -B is putting cryptocurrency kiosks in some Texas grocery shops.”
The miners are the most prominent, and sometimes the most criticized, group because they will place greater demands on the state’s energy grid. Bitdeer, a spinoff from the Chinese miner Bitmain and Riot Blockchain (RIOT), as well as Argo Blockchain, based in the UK, have already established operations in Texas.
Abbott suggested that more miners in the state would attract energy companies to construct power plants to meet demand.
This is a risky bet though, considering the ice storm that froze power plants last year and caused Bitcoin miners to close down to ensure energy supply to homes and businesses was prioritized.
