{"id":12600,"date":"2024-09-11T10:50:47","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T10:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=12600"},"modified":"2024-09-11T10:50:47","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T10:50:47","slug":"the-worlds-biggest-bitcoin-mine-is-rattling-this-texas-oil-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=12600","title":{"rendered":"The World\u2019s Biggest Bitcoin Mine Is Rattling This Texas Oil Town"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The previous October, Sawicky organized a weeklong protest alongside environmental activist group Greenpeace and brandished various anti-bitcoin signs at anyone who entered the Riot facility. Only a few other people turned out in support, leaving Sawicky dejected: \u201cI could not have been more disappointed and disgusted by my fellow humans,\u201d she said, when we first spoke earlier in the year.<\/p>\n

Sawicky is unapologetically brash; she has given up on artfulness and guile, she claims, in favor of brute force. \u201cI am obnoxious. I am in your face,\u201d she says. Her methods have led even close allies to question her. \u201cI love her to death. [But] she has an unfortunate knack for alienating people,\u201d says John Blewitt, a friend of Sawicky who attends TCAC events infrequently. But Sawicky insists that \u201craising hell\u201d is what it takes to provoke a response.<\/p>\n

Though Standridge says the petition incident was not a reflection of the city\u2019s attitude toward Sawicky, other local officials are open in their feelings about TCAC. \u201cThe protesters sit right there in the front row and heckle the whole time. Just like children, they won\u2019t hardly let them speak,\u201d says David Brewer, a commissioner in the Navarro County Commissioners Court, referring to the meet-and-greets held by Riot. \u201cI know that nobody in the county and city government is paying any attention to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

But a few counties away, near the town of Granbury, a large bitcoin mine is already causing some of the problems that Sawicky predicts are in store for the residents of Navarro County, should her warnings be ignored.<\/p>\n

When I pulled<\/span> into Cheryl Shadden\u2019s driveway on a Thursday afternoon, she was bending over a plant bed bookended by two large flowering shrubs that framed the porch of her home. She turned to greet me, revealing on the front of her T-shirt, like Sawicky, a slogan in capital letters that read: \u201cSTOP BITCOIN!!\u201d As I swung open the car door, I was met with the noise: part hum and part rush of wind.<\/p>\n

In 2022, the bitcoin mining company Compute North set up a facility<\/a> adjacent to Shadden\u2019s property, leasing the land from the operator of a gas power plant already on the site. Toward the end of 2023, Shadden claims, the noise spilling from the mine became unbearable. \u201cIt\u2019s like you\u2019ve been invaded by aliens,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Shadden, a nurse anesthetist, has lived for 27 years in a modest bungalow on a plot of land in Granbury, in Hood County, made up of multiple fields and meadows separated by mesh fences. With her lives a full menagerie of animals, including cats, birds, horses, and a pack of enormous Great Pyrenees dogs.<\/p>\n

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