Virunga National Park Seeking to Use Hydroelectricity for BTC Mining

A National Park in the Eastern part of Congo will start mining BTC using hydroelectricity.

Virunga National Park is one of the oldest National Parks in Africa, which was established around April 1925 and is spread over 7,769 square kilometers.

Virunga National Park of Congo is home to endangered mountain Gorillas, Savanna Elephants, Okapis and several other wildlife animals. The national park is planning to raise funds for the maintenance of its wildlife and forests. The park is in its worst phase in terms of maintenance capacity and funds.

Virunga was majorly affected by the pandemic of COVID-19 and government assistance is insufficient.

Adam Popescu from MIT Technology review elaborated on the move. According to Popescu, the Park is planning to use its hydroelectricity plant to mine Bitcoin and will ultimately use that fund to restore the Park and its lost glory.

The director of the Park, Emmanuel de Merode, claimed that Ebola and COVID-19 had adversely impacted tourism, leading to a massive decline in Park’s revenue. “We worked on the power plant and decided to build the network gradually. (…..) We had to devise a solution.”

The director and several other staff in the Park agreed to purchase mining rigs and operate them using the Park’s hydroelectric energy. Earlier in 2020, the National Park purchased used servers with the reference of Sébastien Gouspillou, a crypto investor.

Although 2022 has troubled the whole crypto industry with prices of leading cryptocurrency descended by more than 70 percent since the beginning of 2022, compared to their all-time high trading prices.

However, Merode noted that each mining day represents pure profit, whether BTC’s value goes up or down.

The so-called BTC evangelist Michael Saylor, the executive chairman of MicroStrategy, praised Virunga’s decision to mine Bitcoin. He noted that it is an ideal industry to build in a country with abundant clean energy but can’t use the power to export or produce a product.

Peter Wall, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Argo Blockchain, believes that the Virunga mine might be profitable. Still, the project needs three majors for mining Bitcoin: Funds, Mining Machines and Sufficient power supply.

According to Emmanuel, “we are going to be generating BTC and not speculating its value.” “Park would mine BTC using surplus power and monetizing it,” he added.