Colombia wants to enter the Bitcoin mining industry, and the country’s president has touted its Caribbean coast as a sandbox.
President Gustavo Petro said in Tuesday’s X-Post that the cities of Barranquilla, Santa Marta and Riohacha could become Bitcoin mining hubs by tapping into the country’s surplus clean energy, following a strategy that has worked in Venezuela and Paraguay for the past few years.
Petro called it “an invaluable boost to the development of the Caribbean” and floated the idea of giving co-ownership of the project to the Wayuu community, Colombia’s largest indigenous group based on the same coast.
According to a 2024 World Bank report, Colombia generates 75% of its electricity from renewable sources, more than double the global average. The Caribbean coast in particular has wind and solar power generation capacity that the country has little commercial use of.
Petro believes that mining Bitcoin with that idle power is better than leaving it unused, with the side benefit of avoiding the fossil fuel emission concerns that plague other industries.
His remarks were a direct response to an earlier X post by Luxor Technology’s Alessandro Cecere, who warned that Paraguay’s share of the global hashrate was soaring to 4.3% on the back of cheap hydropower from the Itaipu dam.
The landlocked South American country is now the world’s fourth-largest Bitcoin mining jurisdiction after the United States, Russia and China, according to Hashrate Index data.
Paraguay’s mining operations run on 100% renewable energy and are anchored by two small hydroelectric plants that generate approximately six times the amount consumed by Itaipu and its population of 7 million people.
Industrial miners initially flocked there in 2021 and 2022, when they could secure electricity for about $0.03 per kilowatt-hour.
But electricity costs have nearly doubled since then, and high deposit requirements from state-run utility ANDE have squeezed out small operators, while well-capitalized companies such as HIVE Digital and Penguin Group continue to expand.
What’s happening in the US also opens up opportunities for emerging mining nations.
CoinDesk reported in March that publicly traded U.S. miners are pivoting to AI and high-performance computing, signing AI contracts totaling more than $70 billion and reducing their Bitcoin vaults to fund the transition.
As U.S. carriers pursue lucrative AI businesses, a share of the world’s hashrate is increasingly contested by countries with cheap electricity and friendly governments.
But while Colombia ticks both boxes, the transition from post-X to actual policy frameworks, mining licenses and customs agreements could be difficult.
