chaintimes.com
According to the Reuters report, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said on Wednesday that he had instructed state-owned geothermal electric firm LaGeo to develop a plan to offer bitcoin mining facilities using renewable energy from the country’s volcanoes. The Central American country became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender after Congress approved Bukele’s proposal to embrace the cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin mining and environmental concerns.
Bitcoin has been facing a lot of criticism lately for environmental reasons. Bitcoin mining consumes high energy as it requires specific machines to add bitcoin to the blockchain. Earlier, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced to suspend bitcoin payment options citing environmental concerns. According to a March report by Bank of America analysts, the global bitcoin industry’s overall C02 emissions have risen to 60 million tons, equal to the exhaust from about 9 million cars. The Central American leader’s announcement has put a spotlight on the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies.
El Salvador President plans to use clean energy for bitcoin mining.
Later on Wednesday, El Salvador President Bukele shared a video on his Twitter account showing a powerful plume of what he said was pure water vapor projected into the air from a pipeline. “Our engineers just informed me that they dug a new well that will provide approximately 95MW of 100% clean, 0 emissions geothermal energy from our volcanoes,” the President tweeted. “Starting to design a full #Bitcoin mining hub around it,” he added. Nayib Bukele also changed his Twitter profile photo to an edited image of himself with blue laser eyes, a popular internet fad among supporters of cryptocurrency.
Our engineers just informed me that they dug a new well, that will provide approximately 95MW of 100% clean, 0 emissions geothermal energy from our volcanos 🌋
Starting to design a full #Bitcoin mining hub around it.
What you see coming out of the well is pure water vapor 🇸🇻 pic.twitter.com/SVph4BEW1L
— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) June 9, 2021