El Salvador Starts Mining Bitcoin From Volcanoes

El Salvador has successfully mined Bitcoin BTC/USD from volcano-powered geothermal energy.

What Happened: According to an update from El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, the country has mined 0.01083155 BTC from a state-owned geothermal plant that harnesses energy from volcanoes.

“We’re still testing and installing, but this is officially the first Bitcoin mining from the volcanode,” said Bukele.

While only a bite-sized amount of Bitcoin has been mined thus far, the real accomplishment is perhaps the speed at which the volcano-powered crypto mining plant has come to fruition.

Bukele first proposed a plan to mine Bitcoin using the renewable energy generated from El Salvador’s 23 active volcanoes in June.

 “Our engineers just informed me that they dug a new well, that will provide approximately 95MW of 100% clean, zero-emissions geothermal energy from our volcanoes,” said Bukele, two hours after his initial announcement.

Now, the country appears to have successfully mined its first set of satoshis (smaller denominations of BTC) from its geothermal energy plant.

El Salvador officially adopted Bitcoin as legal tender on Sept. 7. Businesses, small and large, based in the country have begun accepting BTC as payment, including Starbucks Corporation SBUX and McDonald’s Corporation MCD.

BTC Price Action: Bitcoin has gained 9.07% over 24 hours and was trading at $47,026 Friday morning. 

Alain Bonnardeaux on Unsplash.