President Nayib Bukele told Steve Hanke that they extract most geothermal energy from wells near inactive volcanoes. Technicians from a power plant confirmed that they could only do it when volcanoes were extinct.
Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele recently confronted renowned economist Steve Hanke on Twitter. The latter criticized the possible energy source for the Bitcoin City project, as it comes from a dormant volcano.
Hanke is a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, USA. He suggested the impossibility of using a dormant volcano as an energy source for the project, which Bukele announced in November 2021.
In response to the critical observation by Hanke, Bukele clarified that volcanic activity is not the source of geothermal energy. He explained that most geothermal energy comes from wells near inactive volcanoes and said nobody would build a city on an active one.
Bukele added a meme alluding to that comment, which more than 600 people have shared, and other 6,000 have indicated they like it.
Bitcoin evangelist Stacy Herbert and her husband Max Keizer, among other well-known bitcoiners, reacted to the tweet. Herbert posted the famous image of the charred lovers of Pompeii with an ironic comment. He wrote they were he and his wife after moving to a Bitcoin City built on an active volcano.
How a Dormant Volcano Will Power Bitcoin City
Geothermal plants use the internal heat of the Earth or volcanoes to produce electricity for potential Bitcoin mining farms.
There is a geothermal power plant in Berlin, a town located in the southeastern part of San Salvador. In late November, technicians from the plant confirmed that they could only obtain geothermal energy from an extinct volcano.
Roberto Montes, an engineer from La Geo (Salvadoran geothermal plant), said that the process involves capturing the geothermal steam that flows into the atmosphere. After that, they take it to the treatment plant to convert it into energy.
That steam comes from the fissures in the subsoil that the volcano left each time it erupted. Montes explained that El Salvador has reservoirs that generate temperatures above 300 degrees Celsius.
Conchagua, in La Unión, is the region where they project to build Bitcoin City. However, there is not yet a geothermal plant in operation, and nobody knows when its construction will begin.
Nayib Bukele Defends Bitcoin in Social Networks
In early December, the Salvadoran president also made headlines for an intense debate with anti-Bitcoin financial broker Peter Schiff on Twitter.
The debate took place when El Salvador bought Bitcoin on December 4th, expanding the treasury of the Central Latin American nation by 150 BTC. Peter Schiff responded to Bukele that there would be further falls if he kept using the money from taxpayers on what he considered a waste.
Nayib Bukele compared the performance of gold to that of Bitcoin throughout 2021. The president noted that the precious metal had caused losses to El Salvador during the year. However, he said that the same amount of Bitcoin increased by almost 160% over the same period.
In that regard, Schiff stated that Bukele was making a big bet with the money of other people, which might not end well for anyone.
Bitcoin is currently trading at around USD 39,876 and has accumulated a 16.2% loss in the last week. Its trading volume is above 19.80 billion, and its market capitalization is about USD 754.48 billion, according to CoinGecko.
By Alexander Salazar
