El Salvador taps renewable energy from volcanoes to start mining bitcoin

El Salvador has mined 0.00599179 bitcoin, or about $269, with power harnessed from a volcano.

President Nayib Bukele – who has banked his political future on a nationwide bitcoin experiment – tweeted early Friday morning that this is the country’s maiden voyage into volcano-powered bitcoin mining.

On Tuesday, the president posted a flashy 25-second teaser video, which includes shots of a government-branded shipping container full of bitcoin mining rigs, technicians installing and plugging in ASIC miners, as well as sweeping landscape aerials of an energy factory in the thick of a forest, bordering a volcano.

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The video, which has since gone viral with more than 2.3 million views, is captioned simply with “First steps...”

🌋#Bitcoin🇸🇻 pic.twitter.com/duhHvmEnym

— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) September 28, 2021

If the Central American state is, indeed, minting new coin, it will mean that Bukele has made good on a promise first made in June, when he said that he had instructed state-owned geothermal electric company, LaGeo SA de CV to “put up a plan to offer facilities for #Bitcoin mining with very cheap, 100% clean, 100% renewable, 0 emissions energy from our volcanos.”

Bukele indicated in his tweet on Friday that the mining project was still a work in progress and that they are in the process of “testing and installing” new mining equipment.

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El Salvador is literally dubbed the “land of the volcanoes,” and already, geothermal energy accounts for nearly a fourth of its domestic energy production, according to official data.

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