El Salvador sets up bitcoin mining equipment at geothermal plant

The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, this week posted a video, which briefly shows workers delivering and installing cryptocurrency mining equipment at a geothermal power plant.

“First steps … #Bitcoin,” Bukele said in a tweet.

First steps...

🌋#Bitcoin🇸🇻 pic.twitter.com/duhHvmEnym

— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) September 28, 2021

Earlier in September, El Salvador became the first country in the world to make bitcoin legal tender, and introduced a digital wallet for citizens to use for transactions.

The plans to use a geothermal plant to power the energy-intensive process of bitcoin mining were announced by Bukele in early June. The president at time said that the country’s state-owned geothermal electric company had dug a well that will provide some 95 MW of power from volcanoes for the mining.

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 🌋

This is going to evolve fast! 🇸🇻 pic.twitter.com/1316DV4YwT

— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) June 9, 2021

Global bitcoin mining has consumed some 99.1 TWh so far this year, according to a tracker by Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. To put this figure into perspective, that is more than what the nation of the Philippines consumed, the university states.

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