Virunga National Park, located in eastern Congo, mines bitcoins to maintain its source of income against disease and attacks by the defense forces.
Virunga National Park, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is the oldest protected domain in Africa and is a testament to the continent’s biodiversity and herbal beauty. But the park has faced increasing pressure from local militias who have carried out violent attacks on their animals. and employees, while problems such as COVID-19 have led to a prolonged closure of the park to tourists, which it says accounts for around 40% of its income.
An MIT Technology Review report describes how park director Emmanuel de Merode turned to bitcoin mining to monetize the park’s abundant herbal resources that are otherwise locked in to maintain the park’s existence. De Merode met Sébastien Gouspillou, owner of Big Block Green Services, who begged El Salvador about his “Bitcoin City. “Gouspillou described how “[They] were mining by buying electricity, it wasn’t efficient. The money would possibly pass on to Kazakhstan’s oligarchs. In Virunga, we see that it saves the park.
Gouspillou helped de Merode establish the first parts of mining in 2020, which began mining in September of the same year. The site then hired nine full-time employees for the facility’s staff, who work shifts through the jungle to keep the miners running. . It is powered through 3 hydroelectric plants in the park, a sustainable source of electrical energy already used to force nearby villages.
“Today there are 10 boxes fed directly through the plant’s four-meter turbines. Each container from 250 to 500 platforms,” the report describes. Virunga has 3 of those 10 boxes, while Gouspillou has the other seven. Its arrangement allows it to buy power from Virunga, while keeping bitcoin mined.
Michael Saylor commented on the project, saying that Bitcoin is “the ideal high-tech industry to install in a country that has a lot of blank power but doesn’t export a product or produce a service with that power. “
De Merode described how, despite recent market downturns, he remains confident of the project’s good fortune and said: “We are not speculating on its value; We generate it. If you buy Bitcoin and it’s going down, you lose money. We make Bitcoin from excess energy and monetize anything that in a different way has no value. That’s a big difference.
He also referred to bitcoin custody in reaction to a query about what would happen if it were attacked, a widespread risk in the jungle. “If I collapse? The virtual wallet is controlled by our monetary team. . . It is unlikely that we Anyway, we are going to sit on Bitcoin for more than a few weeks, as we want cash to manage the park. So, if something happened to me or if our CFO lost the password, we would have a hard time, but we would not charge much
Satellites are the norm.