The Salvadoran government has successfully mined 473.5 bitcoins using geothermal energy, valued at approximately $29 million at the current market rate, according to official data released on Tuesday, May 14. This mining effort has been carried out with about 300 machines installed by President Nayib Bukele’s administration at the Berlin geothermal plant, which is powered by the Tecapa volcano.

Through this operation, El Salvador has strengthened its state reserves, which as of yesterday, according to the government’s Mempool space, totaled 5,752 units of the digital currency.

Bitcoin mining is the process by which new bitcoins are generated through the work of highly powerful computers known as ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits). These machines solve complex mathematical problems to find the correct alphanumeric sequence that represents a block of transactions. Successfully mining a block rewards the miner with new bitcoins and transaction fees, while also ensuring the security of the Bitcoin network by verifying transactions.

Luke Dashjr, CTO of Ocean Mining and a prominent developer of Bitcoin Core—the software that validates and stores Bitcoin transactions—commented in an interview with «Diario El Salvador», by Kevin Rivera, on the significance of a country like El Salvador mining bitcoins. «Mining is essentially what makes the Bitcoin network secure. So, if a country is looking to adopt Bitcoin, it makes sense for the government to help secure the network as well. You don’t want to depend on miners from the United States, companies, or other entities to secure your local currency, because it puts the country at a lot of risk. So, it makes sense that El Salvador mines,» he stated.