LatinNews Daily - 06 June 2023

* Hong Kong-based firm Tether, which operates the fintech platform tether.to, has announced that it participated in the first round of a new US$1bn initiative to support and promote mining of the cryptocurrency bitcoin in El Salvador, which adopted the cryptocurrency as legal tender in September 2021 – a major initiative of the populist government led by President Nayib Bukele. According to a press release, Tether will “provide capital and bring its domain expertise in energy, hardware, and communications to build ‘Volcano Energy’”, which it describes as “a 241 MW renewable energy generation park” in El Salvador’s Metapán municipality, Santa Ana department. According to Tether, the site chosen for this development “will be divided between 169 MW of photovoltaic solar energy and 72 MW of wind energy. This output will create an initial computation power surpassing 1.3 EH/s (1 EH/s is equivalent to one quintillion hashes per second)”. A statement by the new venture, Volcano Energy, whose CEO is Max Keiser, a US financial commentator and bitcoin enthusiast who works in El Salvador’s national bitcoin office (ONBTC), adds that the Salvadorean government “will play a crucial role in the planning and execution of this initiative, securing a preferred participation equivalent to 23% of the revenues. The investors will own 27%, and the remaining 50% will be reinvested in expanding energy production capacity and advancing Bitcoin mining.”