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Texas bitcoin mining operation holds electric grid ransom, is paid more than it earns mining to not run its hardware on high-load days (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/technology@hexbear.net
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From "Why Texas Republicans are Souring on Crypto" from The Economist https://archive.ph/eIXGc

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[–] 82 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Texas is the champ at letting private industry profit from government.

They built a toll road with $1Billion in public money, using a private equity firm to build it which resulted in large profits, and hazardous work conditions. Then they sold 50 years of toll rights to a different private equity firm for $600mil, with no limit to how much could be charged. When tolls predictably skyrocketed, they had to buy those rights back for $1.7 billion after the firm had collected tolls for 5 years.

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  • [–] 39 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Jesus, sounds like Texas is corrupt af.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago

    Their AG was brazenly criminal. Yet somehow it took nine fucking years for his case to go to trial. And after it did - it quickly ended and all that happened was he had to pay a fine.

    How the criminal case against Texas AG Ken Paxton abruptly ended after nearly a decade of delays | AP News

    The criminal case against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on securities fraud charges has ended after nine years — a span during which the Republican was reelected twice, impeached and acquitted, and emerged more politically powerful than ever.

    He will stay in office and must pay nearly $300,000 in restitution under an agreement announced in a Houston courtroom Tuesday.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I think it was the regular political corruption that exists everywhere in the US, lobbying, campaign donations and the revolving door. Texas is definitely winning the race to sell off all the public goods, but this kind of thing happens all over. Chicago sold off the rights to the parking spaces on public streets in a similar kind of deal.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Was it Chicago or Detroit that sold the rights to their parking meters for 75 years to a group of investors from Abu Dhabi, and after like 4 years they had already made back their money and just started jacking up the price of parking because they could. Also supposedly there is a clause in the agreement that makes it so the city has to pay excessively anytime they want to take away a parking space that the investors own. It's literally insane that a city that size doesn't just tell the investors to fuck off and sic the national guard on them.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    That was Chicago.

    I think we'll see more of this stuff. It's just too tempting for politicians. They can fill a budget hole, lower property taxes, etc, and make it some future administrations problem. Especially if they structure it with a gradual increase in prices.

    It's like taxing people 50 years in the future but getting to spend the money now.

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