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Over the past three years, El Salvador has mined nearly 474 bitcoins, adding to the state’s cryptocurrency holdings
By Nelson Renteria
SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – El Salvador has mined nearly 474 bitcoins since 2021 thanks to a geothermal power plant powered by a volcano, official data showed on Tuesday, bringing the government’s total bitcoin portfolio to nearly $354 million at current prices .
The country’s “Bitcoin Office,” an official government body, reports that government coffers now hold 5,750 bitcoins.
The new additions, 473.5 bitcoins worth around $29 million as of September 2021, were powered by a small amount of geothermal energy generated by the country’s massive Tecapa volcano, touted as an eco-friendly way to accumulate the popular cryptocurrency , which is not regulated by any central bank.
Bitcoin-enthusiastic president’s administration Nayib Bukelewho was re-elected to a second term earlier this year, has installed 300 processors to “mine” bitcoin from the volcano.
Of the 102 megawatts (MW) produced by the state-owned power plant, 1.5 MW is dedicated to cryptocurrency mining. The so-called crypto mining process requires large amounts of energy to compute and cool data centers, which run complex mathematical equations to secure cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
Elsewhere in the world, cryptocurrency miners have recently come under increased scrutiny for their electricity-consuming operations and the impact their activity has on power grids and carbon emissions.
In 2021, El Salvador became the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, along with the US dollar adopted two decades earlier. Bitcoin’s move earned Nayib’s government harsh criticism for its embrace of the volatile cryptocurrency, including from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
According to the government’s Bitcoin Office, cryptocurrency miners Foundry USA, Ant pool, ViaBTC, F2Pool and Binance Pool have combined their resources to win a prize for opening a blockchain capable of verifying the last three years of bitcoin transactions from from the power plant.
(Reporting by Nelson Renteria; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Aurora Ellis)