Nation taps 'volcano power' to mine $29m in Bitcoin
El Salvador is using its riches in geothermal resources to build up its state crypto coffers
The government of El Salvador has used geothermal power from a volcano to mine $29m in Bitcoin.
El Salvador became the first country in the world to use Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021, alongside its other official currency, the US dollar, which it adopted two decades earlier.
The plan was championed by El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, a Bitcoin enthusiast who was this year re-elected for a second term.
In 2021, El Salvador began diverting 1.5MW from a 102MW state-owned geothermal power plant that taps energy from the Tecapa stratovolcano in the country’s centre.
Since then, the country’s Bitcoin Office says that 474 Bitcoins worth around $29m have been mined. In total, the El Salvador government owns around 5,750 Bitcoin.
El Salvador is a hotbed of geothermal activity, boasting 20 volcanoes that have been active in the last 10,000 years.
This has helped El Salvador become one of the world’s leading users of geothermal energy, with 25% of its electricity needs met through this power source in 2021, according to the International Energy Agency.
Mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies requires vast amounts of energy as it requires computers to solve extremely complex math problems.