El Salvador President Nayib Bukele tweeted a video that supposedly shows the country’s progress in adapting a geothermal power plant for Bitcoin mining. The video is signed with just two words – «first steps» .
Recall that in early September, Bitcoin became a legal tender in El Salvador thanks to a government law passed in June. Apparently, the country’s leadership does not plan to stop there.
By tradition, let’s start with an explanation. The El Salvadorian Congress recognized Bitcoin as a full-fledged means of payment on June 9th. Then 62 out of 84 participants in the meeting voted for the bill, which means it was adopted by an overwhelming majority. In accordance with the document, BTC was equated to the national currency of El Salvador – the US dollar.
President Nayib Bukele actively supports this direction of development. He even tweeted a photo of himself with laser eyes as an avatar. This is how the fans of the first cryptocurrency designate themselves, who do not doubt its further growth up to 100 thousand dollars.
The next day, Bukele delighted fans of digital assets with another statement. Then he said that El Salvador will mine bitcoins nationwide, and at the expense of very affordable and fully renewable energy generated by volcanoes. Accordingly, emissions into the atmosphere in this case will be zero, and it will be impossible to criticize Bitcoin mining. Then Nayib added such an image to the publication.
Judging by the current publications of the President, this idea will really be implemented. In addition, the country’s leadership is already ready to share the first version of the project.
How will El Salvador mine Bitcoin?
In early June, the support of the cryptocurrency from the government of El Salvador was already known to the whole world. As we have already noted, it was then that Bukele announced the launch of geothermal power plants, the resource of which will be used for mining BTC. It looks like the video below is the first official trailer for El Salvador’s Bitcoin hoarding strategy.
First steps …
🌋#Bitcoin
– Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻(@nayibbukele) September 28, 2021
According to Cointelegraph , the state-owned company LaGeo should take care of the maintenance of the power plants. It has very specific goals – «to provide new mining centers in the country with very affordable, clean and environmentally friendly electricity. «
This is an important point in the adoption of cryptocurrency globally. The negative impact of mining on the environment is often touted by critics of Bitcoin as one of the main disadvantages of the asset. Therefore, with a smooth transition to renewable electricity, cryptocurrency will lose its reputation as a negative phenomenon.
It should be noted that not all citizens are satisfied with what is happening in the country. The main reason for dissatisfaction is the volatility of the first cryptocurrency, that is, its ability to sharply fall in price. In this regard, residents assume that such a hobby for digital assets could negatively affect the state finances.
In addition, third-party analysts pointed out a much more important problem the day before. It turns out that no one knows exactly who stores the private keys from El Salvador’s bitcoin cryptocurrency wallet. And this atmosphere of secrecy does not correspond to the essence of Bitcoin and other decentralized assets. More information on criticism of the government’s actions can be found here .
By the way, the greater the share of «green» electricity in the overall supply of the Bitcoin network, the more likely Tesla will again start accepting BTC as payment for its electric cars. Recall that in the spring, Tesla CEO Elon Musk removed bitcoins from the list of means of payment for Tesla cars after announcing the negative impact of mining on the environment. At the same time, he later stated that the cryptocurrency could again be accepted by Tesla , if the conditions for the «environmental friendliness» of Bitcoin are met.
As Musk noted then, for this you need to provide at least half of the green hashrate, that is, the computing power of the Bitcoin network. And after that, it will be possible to pay for Tesla cars with BTC again.
We believe that the recognition of Bitcoin as an official means of payment in El Salvador and the mining of cryptocurrency are unlikely to solve the problems of the country’s economy. However, this and the actions will definitely set an example for other countries to start doing the same – at least because of the reluctance to miss the opportunity amid the limited amount of BTC . Well, this will certainly affect the rates of coins and the state of current investors. At the very least, this scenario seems quite real.
