El Salvador Mines First Bitcoin With Volcanic Energy

Almost 22% of the country’s power market is geothermal.

AccessTimeIconOct 1, 2021 at 7:22 p.m. UTC
Updated May 11, 2023 at 6:37 p.m. UTC
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El Salvador has officially mined the first bitcoin using volcanic energy, its president revealed.

  • President Nayib Bukele shared a screenshot of a mined bitcoin on Twitter, calling it “officially the first bitcoin mining the volcanode.”
  • The news follows the Salvadoran president’s announcement earlier this week that the country was taking its “first steps” toward harnessing volcanic energy for bitcoin mining.
  • Following the approval by El Salvador’s congress for the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender in June, Bukele said he had instructed state-owned geothermal electric company LaGeo to allow bitcoin miners to tap the country’s volcanic resources.
  • With 20 “potentially active” volcanoes according to VolcanoDiscovery.com, which account for almost 22% of the country’s energy supply, El Salvador’s harnessing of geothermal energy could provide an answer to the hunt for a reliable clean energy source to power bitcoin mining.

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Jamie Crawley

Jamie Crawley is a CoinDesk news reporter based in London.


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