This latest development was announced on Twitter by President Nayib Bukele, who said the country's state-of-the-art geothermal power company LaGEO will be in charge of the project. LaGEO will be authorized to offer such farms with abundant zero-emission energy drawn directly from the country's active volcanoes.
"I have just tasked the president of @LaGeoSV (our state-owned geothermal power company) to come up with a plan to offer facilities for the extraction of #Bitcoin with 100% carbon-neutral energy that is 100% clean from our very cheap volcanoes."
Shortly after the announcement, President Bukele also added that the engineers working at the volcanic activity site have just completed drilling a new well that will provide approximately 95 Megawatts of clean, zero-emission energy.
As a result, a new Bitcoin mining hub will be set up according to a video shared by the president on Twitter (quotation in real time) around the new well which is reportedly emitting pure water vapor. “I start designing a #bitcoin mining hub around it”.
Commenting on the exciting news, digital asset management firm Morgan Creek founder Anthony Pompliano said implementation is likely to happen very quickly.
"The president of El Salvador had an idea for geothermal extraction from volcanoes last night on Twitter and has already put the plan into action."
Volcanic activity in El Salvador has led to considerably high heat flux with some high-temperature geothermal fields being used to generate over 20% of the country's electricity as of January 2020.
El Salvador is the largest geothermal energy producer in South America with two geothermal plants, Ahuachapán and Berlin, each with a capacity of 95 MW and 66 MW respectively. Both plants are managed by LaGEO.
According to a comment from Documenting Bitcoin, the project would make El Salvador a hot spot for the bitcoin mining business.
"If all 644 MW of wasted geothermal energy were used, El Salvador would become one of the biggest #bitcoin miners in this hemisphere, while being 100% renewable."
The news also follows hot in the wake of a recent update that made El Salvador the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, after its Congress voted in favor of a new Bitcoin law, which briefly states:
"The purpose of this law is to regulate bitcoin as an unlimited legal tender with liberating power, unlimited in any transaction and to a title that private individuals or public corporations require execution."
What do you think of this news? Now that renewables are used to mine BTC, will Musk retrace his steps?
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