The Latest Breaking News from Lee Bratcher

Why?

Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms made headlines over the summer for making millions by selling pre-purchased power back to the grid. The news highlighted how the grid can benefit businesses more than consumers.

Eager to bring new jobs to their towns and boost their tax base, rural Texas counties are courting companies that produce cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrency mining requires huge amounts of electricity, prompting concerns over the industry’s environmental impact — and whether the state’s grid can keep up.

For miners eating the cost of a massive crypto nosedive, the temporary pause may actually be welcome.

Jackie Sawicky, 42, was scrolling Facebook in late April when she saw a video about a surprise economic development announcement by the city of Corsicana, Texas. Intrigued, she clicked to watch.

Mance Harmon graduated from college in 1993 when the World Wide Web was just getting ripples, so he remembers the frustrations of trying to explain it to his parents. It didn’t make sense to them until they got an email account, but now, everyone intuitively understands the Internet, he said.