Guatemala Town Mines Bitcoin Using Used Oil – Bitcoin Magazine
A circular bitcoin economy in Guatemala uses resources that would otherwise be wasted to fuel a local bitcoin mining operation, giving its citizen economic autonomy and showing a viable economic path outside of the government-controlled economy.
Patrick Melder, MD, founder of the circular economy created “Bitcoin Lake,” told Bitcoin Magazine that it is “Kaboom” bitcoin mining project is the result of a desire to help clean nearby Lake Atitlán while providing a source of ongoing income for the community.
“We don’t have big endowments or donations to do what we do,” he said, underscoring a stark difference with El Salvador’s Bitcoin Beach, which was established in part thanks to a donation. “Bitcoin mining was a way to get bitcoin flowing into the community.”
Many attempts to clean up the lake had been made before this project, most of which suffered from a deficiency in trying to solve everything at once. According to Melder, an overhaul approach increases complexity and ends up reducing the likelihood of completion.
“Over the past five years, a major effort to clean up the lake costing over $300 million has failed because it was so complex with so many major stakeholders that could not agree on a solution,” he added.
Bitcoin Lake took a different approach by starting small by repurposing used cooking oil to power bitcoin mining ASICs.
“This cooking oil would either be thrown out onto the street or find its way to the landfill located several hundred feet above Lake Atitlán,” explained Melder. “Either way, it would find its way into the watershed and into the lake.”
This is the generator used to power the bitcoin mining ASICs of the Kaboom project. Gallons of used cooking oil as fuel for the generator sit on the right side of the photo. (Photo/Bitcoin Lake).
By kick-starting this initiative, Melder said he expects to trigger a snowball effect in neighboring communities as they realize that cleaning up the environment can not only be feasible, but also profitable.
“All community leaders and lake residents are concerned about the environment, but there are limited tools and resources to tackle the problem. So our goal is to create a ‘sliding scale’ use of wasted/stranded energy to mine bitcoin and in the process clean up the lake and create wealth in the communities. It’s a sliding scale because in a small community we can simply have a ‘Kaboom-like’ project or we can have small biodegraders collecting waste.”
Little by little, the Bitcoin Lake ASIC machines are gathering that produce a steady stream of bitcoin revenue by reusing a resource that would otherwise have been wasted and found its way into the local lake. (Photo/Bitcoin Lake)
Beyond mining
Panajachel, Guatemala. (Photo/Bitcoin Lake)
Melder used to travel with her family to the city of Panajachel, Guatemala, every summer during her daughters’ elementary school years, but after they graduated from college, those trips to the Central American country ended. However, Melder and his wife continued to seek ways to return. It didn’t take long for him to find out about Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador, which eventually inspired him to travel to Panajachel again and start Bitcoin Lake.
“My desire was to bring the Bitcoin Beach model to Panajachel, which is a beautiful town on Lake Atitlán in the Guatemalan highlands,” he wrote in a 2021 blog post detailing his vision for the project.
In addition to cleaning up the lake, Melder described in that blog post the other goals that Bitcoin Lake would have set out to achieve from its inception, including helping a local education center and creating economic opportunity for the “small but vibrant Guatemala City .” Since then, Bitcoin has been at the forefront of the project’s work.
“Everything we do in the community is related to bitcoin. It’s either funded by bitcoin, learning about bitcoin, or being taught or implemented by bitcoiners,” Melder told Bitcoin Magazine. “Our three goals in the community are to learn about bitcoin, create a bitcoin circular economy, and clean the environment with bitcoin mining as a financial incentive.”
While Bitcoin Lake tackles the latter, the other two goals have not been sidelined. On the education front, the project has helped introduce Bitcoin-related courses to the local educational center Centro Educativo Josué.
“The kids there are taught about all aspects of Bitcoin, from ‘what is money?’, ‘what is inflation?’, ‘why bitcoin was created’, to the basics of bitcoin mining, setting up a bitcoin full node, etc .” detailed Melder. “We’re proud to say that we’ve been doing this since January 2022, developing our own curriculum along the way, and we’ve had Bitcoiners from all over the world come and help.”
The work that began at the local school has since spread to a wider audience in the city, Melder said, in an effort to help people of all ages learn more about the world of peer-to-peer digital money.
“We’ve held bitcoin educational meetings for adults and business owners in the community and tried to include indigenous leaders as well,” he said.
With a better understanding of the technology, adoption is easier as users and business owners are not caught off guard or forced to use bitcoin. Rather, a movement begins, naturally enough.
“Since we started in January of this year, we have brought over 60 businesses in and around Panajachel, and in Guatemala as a whole we have about 200 businesses that we have onboarded to accept bitcoin,” Melder explained.
Business in Panajachel, Guatemala accepts bitcoin. (Photo/Bitcoin Lake)
As awareness of Bitcoin grows and adoption continues to increase, the community is set to continue expanding its initiatives. On the mining front, Melder expects to further develop the reuse of wasted and stranded resources to increase the community’s fixed income and improve the efficiency of the lake’s cleanup even more.
“Our environmental cleanup/Bitcoin mining initiative has just started, but will grow to the point in about a year where we can actually take unsorted landfill waste (new or old) and turn it into a clean energy source to mine bitcoin,” Melder predicted. “We are working with a group from the UK to bring this to life and it will have a huge impact in Panajachel and Guatemala as we now have a financial incentive to clean up the massive waste problem that exists in Guatemala and in most developing countries. We are proud that we will be the first to market with this technology.”
Landfill in Panajachel, Guatemala. (Photo/Bitcoin Lake)
