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El Salvador has mined nearly 474 bitcoins, adding to the state’s cryptocurrency portfolio, over the past three years.
By Nelson Renteria
SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – El Salvador has mined nearly 474 bitcoins since 2021 using a geothermal plant powered by a volcano, official data showed on Tuesday, bringing the government’s total bitcoin portfolio to nearly $354 million at current prices. current.
The country’s Bitcoin Office, an official government entity, reports that government coffers now contain 5,750 bitcoins.
The new additions, 473.5 bitcoins worth around $29 million since September 2021, were powered by a small amount of geothermal energy generated by the country’s towering Tecapa volcano, touted as an environmentally friendly way to ‘accumulate the famous cryptocurrency, which is not regulated by any central bank.
The administration of Bitcoin enthusiast President Nayib Bukele, who was re-elected earlier this year to a second term, installed 300 processors to “mine” bitcoins from the volcano.
Of the 102 megawatts (MW) produced by the public power plant, 1.5 MW are dedicated to cryptocurrency mining. The so-called cryptocurrency mining process requires large amounts of energy for computing and data cooling centers, which execute complex mathematical equations in order to secure cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
Elsewhere around the world, cryptocurrency miners have recently come under increased scrutiny due to their electricity-consuming operations and the impact of their activity on power grids and carbon emissions.
In 2021, El Salvador became the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, alongside the US dollar which it had adopted two decades earlier. The Bitcoin move has earned Nayib’s government harsh criticism for its adoption of the volatile cryptocurrency, including from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Cryptocurrency miners Foundry USA, Ant pool, ViaBTC, F2Pool and Binance Pool have pooled their resources to earn a reward for opening a blockchain capable of verifying the last three years of Bitcoin transactions from the miner electric, according to the government’s Bitcoin office.
(Reporting by Nelson Renteria; editing by David Alire Garcia and Aurora Ellis)