Share this article

El Salvador’s President: ‘First Steps’ Being Made to Power Bitcoin Mining With Volcanic Energy

Nayib Bukele tweeted a video showing progress towards an idea he first floated in June.

Updated Apr 10, 2024, 2:21 a.m. Published Sep 29, 2021, 3:35 p.m.
Nayib Bukele (Emerson Flores/APHOTOGRAFIA/Getty Images)

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said the Central American country is taking the “first steps” toward developing volcanic energy for bitcoin mining.

In a tweet posted on Tuesday, Bukele uploaded a short video showing images of work being done by state-owned geothermal electric company LaGeo to power mining machines. The video showed workers connecting mining rigs and a large black shipping container bearing the inscription “Government of El Salvador” being delivered.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the State of Crypto Newsletter today. See all newsletters

Read more: El Salvador’s Bitcoin Volcano Can Be a Model for Cleaner Crypto

In June, after approving a bill to make bitcoin legal tender in the Central American nation, Bukele said he had directed LaGeo to allow power-hungry bitcoin miners to plug into the country’s volcanic resources.

jwp-player-placeholder

“I’ve just instructed the president of @LaGeoSV (our state-owned geothermal electric company), 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 tweeted at that time.

The idea was born in a Twitter Spaces session Bukele shared with bitcoin gadfly Nic Carter in June. It was based on the fact that El Salvador has hundreds of megawatts of untapped geothermal potential, as well as a network of underutilized power plants.

In September, bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador, three months after the Bitcoin Law passed the country’s legislature.

Read more: El Salvador Is Botching Its Bitcoin Experiment

More For You

Protocol Research: GoPlus Security

GP Basic Image

What to know:

  • As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
  • GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
  • Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.

More For You

U.S. Market Structure Bill May Slide to January as Talks Continue Over Several Points

U.S. Congress (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk)

While legislative language circulates among all four corners of the talks — industry, White House, Republicans and Democrats — the process is still mid-stride.