- Near the hydroelectric plant along the Poás River, in Costa Rica there are 650 mining machines from 150 clients that operate non-stop from eight containers.
- Data Center CR is owned by a company that owns three hydroelectric plants valued at $13.5 million dollars, with a total power capacity of 3 megawatts.
- Previously, the main line of business of the plants was focused on selling electricity to the network, now their potential client is the cryptocurrency pools.
El Salvador, the first and only country in the world to make Bitcoin a legal tender, changed the historical course of crypto assets. But that was not the only measure taken by the country led by Nayib Bukele, who also decided to use volcanic energy to mine BTC.
Paraguay followed the same path by passing a bill to legalize and regulate crypto mining, which would be exploited with the energy wasted from the Itaipu hydroelectric plant, the third largest in the world. Now Costa Rica is the new Latin American country that joins this crypto boom.
Sustainable Crypto Mining in Costa Rica
For years, China and the coal industry were the ones that led the market, but since 2020 the landscape has completely changed. The Chinese government expelled all the miners, who found refuge in Kazakhstan, Russia, the United States and Canada, among other countries.
the news agency Reuters communicated that In Costa Rica, more precisely near the hydroelectric plant next to the Poás River, there are 650 mining machines for 150 clients that “operate nonstop from eight containers.” This is what is considered to work with clean energy.
According to Reuters, the central Data Center CR It is owned by a company that owns three hydroelectric plants valued at $13.5 million dollars, with a total energy capacity of 3 megawatts.
evolve to survive
According to Eduardo Kooper, president of the company for the last three decades, the company sold electricity to the state grid, although everything changed since the appearance of the coronavirus pandemic since the local government stopped buying electricity due to the surplus supply. of existing energy, reason why it looked for an alternative.
This cessation led them to pause activities for nine months. however hA year ago you heard about Bitcoin, blockchain and digital mining and although I was very skeptical at first, He saw that this business consumes a lot of energy, just the surplus they have.
“International cryptocurrency miners are looking for cheap, clean energy and a stable internet connection, which Costa Rica has in abundance“, commented Kooper, who asked the Costa Rican authorities to be “more aggressive in trying to attract more crypto mining business”.
The initial investment of Data Center CR, despite that skepticism that Kooper claimed to have, was $500,000 dollars in products to be able to set up his farm. Today, almost a year later, it generates great monthly returns.
Costa Rica, potential to be a crypto mining center?
Costa Rica, if its government so desires, could become another major venue for digital asset mining: According to data from the National Center for Energy Control, almost all of the country’s energy comes from renewable sources, of which 72% comes from hydroelectric plants.
Central America, based on what was generated by El Salvador, has become an important region for the exchange of digital assets. According to Coin ATM Radar, currently in Costa Rica it has 6 ATMs where you can trade cryptocurrencies, five less than those in Mexico.
Crypto mining is a key part of the digital assets scheme and the use of renewable resources can be a push for the industry to further raise its standards.
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