El Salvador uses volcanoes to mine Bitcoins | Tests carried out in the first country to use it as legal tender

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele announced on Friday that the country is “testing” bitcoin mining., the cryptocurrency which is legal tender in the country, using geothermal energy from volcanoes.

“We are still testing and installing, but this is officially the first bitcoin mining from a volcano,” the president said in a short message in English from his Twitter account.

Bictoine mining is the process by which new bitcoins are created using computers that solve complex mathematical problems that require a large amount of electrical energy to operate.

September 7 The Savior became the first country to use bitcoin as legal tender, in order to reclaim its stagnant economy, dollarized two decades ago.

Bukele did not provide further details on how the mining process will be conducted, although he shared a short video on his Twitter account on Tuesday, preceded by the phrase “first steps”.

The shared material shows a geothermal power plant in the east of the country, into which enters a truck with a large container, inside which a man works to connect cables to computer equipment that would be used to mine bitcoin.

Months before cryptocurrency began to be legal tender in the country, Bukele expressed his readiness that bitcoin could be mined in El Salvador using geothermal energy from its volcanoes.

The government hopes that the use of virtual currency will help capture the more than $ 400 million in commissions from remittances sent by Salvadorans abroad.

The total of these shipments represents 22% of the country’s GDP, while some 3 million Salvadorans live outside its territory, including 2.5 million in the United States.