Cryptocurrency miners line up to come to Texas, and rural counties are welcoming them

Jacob Rodriguez was driving a John Deere tractor in a West Texas cotton field when he received a phone call that would change his life. “I was pulling a 59-foot air seeder ... and at the same time I was on the phone having my interview,” Rodriguez, 29, said. On the other end of the phone early this year were representatives from a new business that was coming to Dickens County, a community of around 2,000 people an hour east of Lubbock. By March, Rodriguez had quit farming cotton — something he called “just another job” — and began training…