El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele Shares a Video of the ‘First Steps’ Behind the Volcano-Powered Bitcoin Mine Construction

On Tuesday, Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele shared a video of a bitcoin mine in operation adjacent to a volcano. Bukele mentioned the volcano-powered bitcoin mining on June 9 once he talked concerning the “95MW of 100 percent clean, zero emissions heat from our volcanos.”

Salvadoran President Shares Video of Volcano-Powered Bitcoin Mining Facility

The president of El Salvador shared a video via the social media platform Twitter that said “First steps,” because the film shows ASIC bitcoin mining rigs being put in at a heat plant. The video shows containers that are emblazoned with the Salvadoran government logos and an outsized amount of ASIC mining devices. The video has been viewed around two million times on Twitter, and Bukele’s video tweet has over 50K likes and over 12,000 retweets.

While several bitcoin proponents said the mining facility was “impressive,” a couple of Salvadoran voters complained concerning the utilization of energy. “So, there are centers to supply additional energy, however to mine bitcoin,” one individual asked the Salvadoran president. “People who have been anticipating electricity for over thirty years. Not that you just would facilitate those most in need? Hypocrite,” the person added .

A lot of individuals gave the girl flak for asking Bukele that question, however a variety of individuals stuck up for her. “She simply wonders, like all normal people,” another individual replied in Nayib Bukele’s twitter thread. “Why is there money to line up power plants for [bitcoin] mining and there’s no money to produce the complete population. Before insulting individuals, make an argument,” the person added . Besides the introduction to volcano-powered bitcoin mining this past June, Bukele additionally mentioned the topic in bigger detail on an episode of “What Bitcoin Did.”

‘Very Clean supply of Energy With nearly No Downsides,’ Project Construction to price $480 Million

The Salvadoran president told the host Peter McCormack concerning however “El Salvador has not been the country that’s recognised to be the primary in innovation,” however he asked, “Why not this time?”

While Bukele stressed throughout his interview that energy was “a very , very clean source of energy” with “almost no downsides,” the Salvadoran president failed to reassess the topic of specific Salvadorans not having access to electricity. “Currently, the electrification index is 83.4%” in El Salvador, consistent with the newest statistics. Major urban areas of El Salvador have around 97% access to electricity, whereas ruralized regions within the country nowadays show an electrification index estimate of around 72%.

El Salvador is the largest producer of energy in Central America and in July, the country suffered from a vast power failure. The Regional Operator Entity (EOR) , primarily based in El Salvador, told the press that they witnessed a “load loss of 2,300 megawatts.”

The power outage in El Salvador and alternative regions in Central America cost around $18.2 million from failures. “The demand we had at that point was around 8,300 megawatts within the Central American region. we’ve lost 30% of the electrical power load,” the EOR director, René González, told reporters.

When discussing the volcano bitcoin mining experiment with Peter McCormack, Bukele stressed that the project is pricey. “It’s about to price $480 million, thus that’s about to be an inheritance for the country as a result of we have a tendency to ar building infrastructure paid by bitcoin,” Bukele aforesaid in his interview. Alongside this, demand for electricity in El Salvador is predicted to grow annually at a rate of 5% year-over-year.