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El Salvador has mined 0.00599179 bitcoin = $269 with power generated from a volcano. The country’s president Nayib Bukele, an advocate of Bitcoin tweeted early Friday morning that the country is shifting into volcano-powered Bitcoin mining.

Bukele posted a 25-second teaser video that consisted of shots of a government-branded shipping container full of Bitcoin mining rigs. It also had technicians plugging the ASIC miners with an aerial view of an energy factory bordering a volcano. The viral video captioned “First Steps...” generated over 2.3 million views.

Bukele Keeps his promises

The Central American country’s president has already promised last June that he instructed a state-owned geothermal electric company “LaGeo SA de CV to “put up a plan to offer facilities for #Bitcoin mining with very cheap, 100% clean, 100% renewable, 0 emissions energy from our volcanos.”

Bukele explained in the same tweet that this is a work in progress that they are “testing and installing” new mining equipment.

The president also provided a breakdown of the mining rewards so far.

 “It’s just geothermal energy,” said bitcoin miner Alejandro de la Torre, who recently made the move from China to Texas. “Iceland has been doing it since the very, very beginning of bitcoin mining.”

El Salvador, a country labeled as the “land of the volcanoes” where geothermal energy makes a fourth of the country’s domestic energy production according to official data. 

″A fully renewable, untapped energy resource has been put to work strictly because of bitcoin,” said bitcoin mining engineer Brandon Arvanaghi. “Bitcoin is the greatest accelerant to renewable energy development in history.”

The volcano-mining followed El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin, declaring the cryptocurrency as a legal tender.

In conclusion, the Salvadoran government purchased hundreds of Bitcoin and also launched a national virtual wallet called “Chivo” — a Salvadoran slang for “cool”. It offers no-fee transactions and quick cross-border payments.