{"id":16151,"date":"2021-06-10T15:05:30","date_gmt":"2021-06-10T15:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci02854e64e000270d"},"modified":"2021-06-10T15:05:30","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T15:05:30","slug":"el-salvador-volcano-for-bitcoin-mining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/business\/el-salvador-volcano-for-bitcoin-mining","title":{"rendered":"El Salvador President Invites Bitcoin Miners To Utilize Volcano Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has invited bitcoin miners to take advantage of new facilities to be set up at a state-owned geothermal, electric company specifically for the industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur engineers just informed me that they dug a new well, that will provide approximately 95 [megawatts] of 100% clean, 0 emissions geothermal energy from our volcanos,\u201d Bukele shared on Twitter<\/a>. \u201cStarting to design a full Bitcoin mining hub around it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea to use El Salvador\u2019s volcanoes as a power source for Bitcoin mining apparently arose in a Twitter Spaces chat room hosted by Coin Metrics cofounder Nic Carter. The chat room held conversations around Bitcoin, mining, and how the largest cryptocurrency has a high penetration in developing countries, as Carter said in an interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In particular, El Salvador\u2019s recent approval to make bitcoin legal tender in the country<\/a> happened while the chat room was being held. Bukele joined the chat room live from the country\u2019s assembly while the vote occurred.<\/p>\n

Bukele is moving fast to increase Bitcoin adoption in his country. He announced that El Salvador would be declaring bitcoin as legal tender<\/a> on June 5 in a video recorded for the Bitcoin 2021 conference, and the country\u2019s government approved the bill<\/a> only four days later. On the same day, Bukele shared<\/a> that he had already contacted the country\u2019s geothermal electric company to make arrangements for bitcoin miners to enjoy cheap, clean, renewable energy that emits no greenhouse gases<\/a>. Engineers dug the new well in a matter of hours.<\/p>\n

Bukele\u2019s moves might present opportunities for the Bitcoin mining industry at a particularly good time. Chinese miners, for instance, are experiencing a strong state crackdown on the sector,<\/a> and might be encouraged to take advantage of El Salvador\u2019s cheap and clean geothermal energy and relocate their rigs to Central America. Bitcoin mining acts as a purely free market and the geographic location of miners is determined in a game-theoretic way \u2014 while one country may ban it, another can always welcome it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, invited bitcoin miners to set up at a state-owned geothermal facility powered by a volcano.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2572,"featured_media":5793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[189,238,969],"class_list":{"0":"post-16151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bitcoin-mining","9":"tag-el-salvador","10":"tag-energy-consumption"},"author_data":{"id":2572,"name":"Namcios","nicename":"namcios","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/pfp-96x96.png"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/mining.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2572"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}