On Sunday 7 August Gustavo Petro will be sworn in as President of Colombia. He will take the reins of a country immersed in a deep crisis, for which many are wondering what position the sovereign will take towards bitcoin (quotation BTC).
The Colombian population lives on the verge of chaos, with high rates of poverty, inequality, inflation and debt. Perhaps for this reason, last year Colombia was the third country in the world for the growth of holders of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
However, Petro's stance on the cryptocurrency industry remains a mystery. It is known that he could be in favor of bitcoins only for some comments made in the past.
He went so far as to point out that Colombia has the potential to export clean energy for bitcoin mining. At the time, in fact, he had applauded the initiative launched in El Salvador to mine cryptocurrencies with geothermal energy.
A few months ago, Petro stated that Colombia can harness the wind and Guajira Falls to create new forms of energy and mine Bitcoin.
“We [Colombians] can take ownership of these new forms of energy that we could link to cryptocurrencies. And we would have another world, arm in arm with the Wayú communities, the coal workers of the Cesar region and the black communities of the Pacific coast of Colombia. " - Gustavo Petro, new president of Colombia.
Mine bitcoin in the Colombian Guajira, an opportunity?
The government plan presented by Gustavo Petro to all Colombians proposes structural changes in the systems of work, pensions, education and health and proposes to orient the economy towards clean and non-extractive production.
In doing so, he made it clear that the country will begin a transition process from oil extraction to clean energy-focused production, even as the nation is heavily dependent on oil to generate foreign currency.
Petro, since his election campaign, has undertaken policies to preserve the environment and has mentioned the need for the country to produce clean energy to align with international treaties, in particular the Paris Agreement.
All these plans are in line with the possibility of mining bitcoin in the Colombian Guajira, which represents a great opportunity for the country that will look for alternatives to restart all its production engines, facing the current economic crisis.
The president of the Association of Blockchain Entrepreneurs (AsoBlockchain) of Colombia, Camilo Suárez, recently stated in an exclusive interview that, in fact, La Guajira is a privileged area for the production of clean energy and, therefore, it is a territory with great potential for bitcoin mining.
“Gustavo Petro saw that the energy produced in La Guajira can be used to mine bitcoins. So, what El Salvador is doing with geothermal energy, Colombia wants to do it with the excess energy we have in La Guajira, something very profitable. In fact, we have held several meetings with people from the area who have shown themselves to be very willing to achieve this goal. Many of them do not know what bitcoin is and we are working on it, but they want to produce clean energy. " - Camilo Suárez, president of AsoBlockchain Colombia.
