El Salvador is going hard on Bitcoin. The country recently made the crypto coin a legal tender, becoming the first sovereign nation to do so. The decision was met with wide acceptance. Out of 84 members of El Salvador’s congress, 62 approved the new Bitcoin law making the token legal tender in the country. The country is also partnering up with Strike, a digital wallet platform, to build its new financial infrastructure.
However, it seems El Salvador isn’t content with stopping there. The small country’s president has an even more absurd plan in mind. Nayib Bukele wants to mine bitcoin using volcanoes, which sounds plausible the more you think about it. While there is some pollution associated with geothermal energy, this is relatively minimal when compared to fossil fuels. This announcement might just be the thing bitcoin needs to start going up again.
President Bukele, announced his decision on Twitter, partnering up with their state-owned geothermal electric company, LaGeo. The problem with bitcoin mining was the amount of energy needed to actually sustain the effort. Even Iran had to ban mining in their country for the summer months as the country just couldn’t sustain the energy cost in the hot months. You can view President Bukele’s tweet below.
Bitcoin has been on a downward spiral for months, hitting lows of around $31,000 last month. However, El Salvador’s recent announcements have breathed some life in investors, raising the price up to $37,000. Still, that’s no way as higher as bitcoin was the same time last year. Many companies, opted out of the bitcoin trend because mining required vast amounts of fossil fuel coal to be burned in order to generate enough energy.
However according to President Bukele, ‘Our engineers just informed me that they dug a new well, that will provide approximately 95MW of 100% clean, 0 emissions geothermal energy from our volcanos. Starting to design a full Bitcoin mining hub around it”. Is geothermal energy the answer for mining bitcoin? It seems a little farfetched considering not everyone is going to have a volcano lying around.
This does open options for other countries that have their own volcanic mountains in their lands. Why just settle for volcanoes though? Maybe El Salvador can set up solar-powered mining hubs as well.