The Clarion Ledger: Bitcoin Data Centers in Mississippi? See Where They Are

By: Ross Reily

When it was announced in January that Amazon Web Services is going to build two new hyperscale data centers in Madison County, speculation was there may be more data center business for the Magnolia State in the future.

While there isn’t new infrastructure being built, it was announced this week that CleanSpark Inc., which specializes in bitcoin mining, has completed the acquisition of three bitcoin mining data centers in Mississippi.

CleanSpark of Georgia purchased properties in Vicksburg, Wiggins and Meridian from a company in China.

“Most people probably didn’t even know there was bitcoin mining going in Mississippi at all,” CleanSpark Chief Commercial Officer Issac Holyoak told the Clarion Ledger on Tuesday. “But this is an exciting venture for us.”

Holyoak said that outside of the three centers his company is acquiring, he knows of only one other in Mississippi, that being in the Northeast Mississippi town of Iuka.

The property in Vicksburg is the largest with a 17,500 square foot building on five acres, followed by the Wiggins facility of 10,500 square feet on nine acres and the Meridian facility of 5,500 square feet on five acres.

By comparison, the Amazon project represents the single largest corporate capital investment in state history. Amazon Web Services will build two sites, one a 927-acre site and the other a 786-acre site for the two hyperscale data centers.

“These are nowhere near as big as the Amazon data centers that were announced a few weeks ago, but they are built and they are already up and running,” Holyoak said. “We also have plans to expand them, and we are hoping to do that very soon. We are already working with economic development officials in all of these towns to make that happen.”

Holyoak said each facility employs 26 people, from engineers to security workers, and he hopes for that to double as expansion is completed.

Bitcoin mining is the process of creating new bitcoins by solving extremely complicated math problems that verify transactions in the currency. Simply put, that takes large computers using a lot of energy to get the work done.

Again, the energy that is being used for these centers does not equate to what will be used by Amazon Web Services, which will require significant investment and multiple substations and transmission to the data centers.

“All of the electricity required is already in place,” Holyoak said.

In fact, he said one of the ways CleanSpark will make money off these facilities is by replacing all of the hardware in each building with something more efficient.

“So, we won’t use as much energy to get the same information,” he said. “The servers and computers we run actually run about half of the electricity that the previous computers were running. What we are able to do is take the existing load and do a lot more with it because of the machinery we run.”

In Georgia, CleanSpark has invested more than $700 million into energy infrastructure, miners, buildings, and job creation. However, Georgia is one of the top 3 states in the country for bitcoin data centers.

Holyoak said CleanSpark is hoping to identify more locations in Mississippi for data centers in the future.

“Expanding into a new state is an important milestone for our company and we are looking forward to partnering with the communities we are joining,” Zach Bradford, CleanSpark CEO said in an email. “Our investment in Mississippi is one more step in the direction of the shared prosperity that Bitcoin promises.”

Holyoak said hiring for all three centers has begun.

“We have hired some teams to sort of watch things as we complete the hiring and build up the local community presence,” Holyoak said. “We have already met with all of the key players in these communities. I am thrilled to be in Mississippi. It’s pretty exciting for us.”

*Correction: There are 26 employees across the three facilities.