Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, announced that central American country has now been able to mine bitcoins using a volcano.

Bukele tweeted, “We are still testing and installing, however this is officially Bitcoin mining from the volcanode.” Bukele also provided a breakdown of all the mining rewards so far.

The breakdown shows that the country has produced 0.0059 BTC, which is worth $260.

After Bukele posted a video on microblogging that showed ASIC miners setting up and delivering mining equipment to El Salvador, this was done.

El Salvador became the first country in September to accept Bitcoin as legal currency despite widespread skepticism in the country and warnings from the international community about the risks for consumers.

The huge carbon footprint of Bitcoin mining has been criticized by many because most of the electricity is generated from fossil fuels. Many leaders and studies raised concerns about the carbon footprint of cryptocurrency mining, which involves creating new coins using multiple computers that consume electricity to compute complex mathematical equations.

According to the most recent data from the University of Cambridge, and the International Energy Agency, this bitcoin mining consumes approximately the same amount of energy each year as the Netherlands in 2019.

China has banned cryptocurrency-related transactions and mining activities, citing economic and energy concerns that could harm global environmental goals.

Geothermal energy is an important step towards ‘green Bitcoin mining’. Nearly 25% of El Salvador’s electricity production comes from geothermal energy.

Elon Musk , chief of Tesla, had also reversed his position on using bitcoin to buy its vehicles. Musk stated that Tesla will not sell bitcoins and plans to use bitcoin to transact as soon as the mining technology becomes more sustainable.