Riot Sold 79% of Its Bitcoin as Texas Picked a Data Center Critic

Riot Platforms handed over the bulk of its Bitcoin stack to pay for AI. The Texas miner's treasury shrank from 11,380 coins in June to 2,418 by September 30 — roughly 79% of the pile gone in three months.

The damage is spelled out in its third-quarter results: 20,264 coins sold for about $1.5 billion between January and September, most of it funneled into data center construction. Work the math on its remaining holdings and the 1,637 coins it mined, and Riot offloaded roughly 10,600 coins in the third quarter alone. Back in September, BeInCrypto asked whether Riot would sell 5,821 coins freed up by repaying a Coinbase loan. It now holds less than half that.

Then Riot went shopping for tenants. On Wednesday it signed a $28 billion AI lease covering its entire Corsicana, Texas campus, rented to an unnamed AI lab. Stack that with earlier deals and Riot has about $38 billion in contracted rent. Under the Corsicana terms, the tenant covers the site's power costs, the company said.

The political timing is spicy. Texans elected Democrat Gina Hinojosa as governor on Tuesday — one day before the lease dropped. She takes office in January and has pledged to issue a moratorium on all data center permits until the Legislature can codify regulations, according to Texas Monthly. Jefferies estimated a moratorium could put 13.3 gigawatts of announced Texas data center projects at risk.

Texas has already pressed pause. In September, outgoing Governor Greg Abbott halted state environmental permits for data centers pending a grid audit, which law firm Bracewell expects in mid-December. Hinojosa's proposals to lawmakers lean on terms, not bans: ending subsidies and requiring proof that household power and water bills won't rise, her campaign said. She can direct state agencies, but rewriting tax breaks takes the Legislature.

Riot's results don't breathe a word about the election. Investors didn't seem to care — RIOT rose 13.9% to $15.97 before Wednesday's open, per Yahoo Finance. Next on the calendar: December's grid audit, Hinojosa's January swearing-in, and Corsicana's first 400 megawatts, due September 2027. Riot is one of several US miners rerouting power toward AI.