After 30 years, a Costa Rican hydroelectric power plant was about to fail. Then came the Bitcoins

The owners of a hydroelectric power plant in Costa Rica, 35 kilometers from the capital San Jose, found themselves on the verge of bankruptcy after 30 years. The government, which holds the monopoly of energy distribution in the country, had stopped buying it when the pandemic began. Eduardo Kooper, the president of the family business that owns the hydroelectric power plant, which is fed by a small river running through coffee plantations, sought out other buyers with no luck. Then he heard about Bitcoin. And the family business has apparently changed forever.

The hydroelectric company of the Kooper family is worth $ 13.5 million. The owners have invested $ 500,000 to power hundreds of computers that mine cryptocurrencies with the energy produced: the machines housed in the containers, each belonging to a different customer, use their computing power to generate new Bitcoins.

The history of Costa Rica’s hydroelectric power plant is emblematic from the point of view of the sustainability of blokchains and virtual currencies. The biggest criticism of mining is that of using too much energy, which in the vast majority of cases would not be green.

by Pier Luigi Pisa

edited by Elena Rosiello