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> Eg. Mentioning that it's nuts to mine BTC while they could have used the geothermal energy to lower electricity costs in the country ( since they import 20%),
by aga98mtl 5y ago
> Eg. Mentioning that it's nuts to mine BTC while they could have used the geothermal energy to lower electricity costs in the country ( since they import 20%), makes more economic sense for it's citizens.
I think the point is that crypto mining finances the building of power generation in areas where it was not profitable to do so due to lack of electricity transportation infrastructure. This is great for very poor countries that cannot develop low-hanging fruit power generation opportunities due to their nonexistent grid, no paying customers, etc.
- davidgerard 5y agoAuthor here. What you describe would be nice, but it's literally not what's happening here. It turns out you can't just arbitrarily declare "we're setting up geothermal here", as Bukele did - it's complex and susceptible to dangerous screwups. e.g. the LaGeo plant mentioned in the piece opened a new 95 megawatt well in June. That was the result of years of careful planning, and there's already concerns that it's screwing up the local groundwater - a serious concern, given a lot of the local villages around Berlin don't have running water and rely on the groundwater.