By Nathan Ferguson
The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has taken to his Twitter page to share the video of how the country is embarking on the project of mining Bitcoin with geothermal energy – from volcanoes.
The president, known as an avid user on Twitter, posted the videos yesterday with the following caption, “First Steps.” He accompanied this caption with a volcano emoji.
The video he posted, which was reported to have gotten about 1.8 million views, shows the establishment of a data center in the forest. The video then zoomed in on one worker hooking up a wire inside the center to a BTC mining machine. Mining Bitcoin is the process of using powerful computers to verify BTC transactions on the blockchain.
Because of the sheer amount of energy consumed by the process, BTC mining has been under some scrutiny lately. The majority of the companies in the space are looking to leverage clean energy to produce the asset.
Nayib Bukele said back in June that the state-owned electricity company of El Salvador, LaGeo, will make use of 100% renewable, 100% clean, zero emissions, and very cheap energy from volcanoes to mine BTC.
The country has controversially made BTC a legal tender for its residents on the 7th of September, 2021. Becoming the first country to set the trail. This idea is the sole brainchild of the millennial president of the country who assumed office in 2019. Despite the acceptability of the president by all, as shown in recent polls with a rating over 80%, the Bitcoin law from the president has gotten criticism from his citizens and even the World Bank.
The idea of BTC being a legal tender was slammed by some Salvadorans who took to the streets to stage protests against the president. According to local media, this has been the biggest demonstration since the president took power.
The Bitcoin law mandated El Salvador’s businesses to accept BTC as payment if they have the technology. Though citizens don’t have to use it, the government encourages them to do so. This was done by the advertisement of Chivo, the state wallet which gifts citizens $30 for downloading it on their smartphones. Also, some Salvadorans have shared images of their cryptocurrency gifts gotten from the app on Twitter.
At first, the app had some technical issues, but the president claims more citizens are using the app than any bank in El Salvador.