Guatemala’s circular bitcoin economy uses resources that would otherwise be wasted to gazole the garçonnière bitcoin mining operation, giving it financial independence to residents and showing a durable economic path outside the government-controlled economy.
Patrick Melder, MD, founder of the circular economy coined “Bitcoin Lake“Bitcoin Gazette that its secteur Bitcoin mining project “Kaboom” It is the result of a desire to help clean up nearby Lake Atitlan while providing a continuous primeur of income for the community.
“We don’t have any supérieur giveaways or donations to do what we do,” he said, noting a stark difference with Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador, which was created in tronçon thanks to a donation. “Bitcoin mining was a way for bitcoin to flow into society.”
There were numerous attempts to clean up the lake prior to this project, and most of them have struggled with the glitch of trying to solve everything at léopard des neiges. According to Melder, the overhaul approach increases complexity and ends up decreasing the likelihood of achievement.
“Within the past five years, supérieur efforts to clean up the lake at a cost of more than $300 million have failed parce que it was too complex with so many supérieur stakeholders that they could not agree on a amélioré,” he added.
Bitcoin Lake took a different approach by starting small while reusing the cooking oil used to power Bitcoin mining ASICs.
“This cooking oil will either be dumped on the street or find its way to a landfill located hundreds of feet above Lake Atitlan,” Melder explained. “Either way, it will find its way into the watershed and into the lake.”
This is the generator used to power the Bitcoin mining ASICs on the Kaboom project. The gallon of used cooking oil that fuels the generator is on the right side of the effigie. (Caricature/Bitcoin Lake).
By launching this fantaisie, Melder said he expects to make a snowball effect in neighboring communities parce que they realize that cleaning up the environment can be not only feasible, but also enrichissant.
“All community leaders and lake citizens care embout the environment but there are limited tools and resources to address the problem. So our gardien de but is to create a “graded scale” use of wasted/stranded energy to frimousse bitcoin and in the process clean up the lake and create wealth in the communities. It’s a graduated scale parce que in one small community, we may simply have a “Kaboom-like” enterprise or we may have a small biodigestion that collects waste. “
Little by little, Bitcoin Lake is hoarding ASICs that produce a steady stream of bitcoin income by repurposing resources that would otherwise be wasted and finding their way into the garçonnière lake. (Caricature/Bitcoin Lake)
beyond mining
Panajachel, Guatemala. (Caricature/Bitcoin Lake)
Melder used to travel with his family to Panajachel City, Guatemala, every summer during his daughters’ college years, but after they graduated from college, those trips to the Orthogonal American folk ended. However, Melder and his wife continued to image for ways to return. It wasn’t colossal before he discovered Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador, which eventually inspired him to travel back to Panajachel and start Bitcoin Lake.
He wrote in 2021: “My desire was to bring the Bitcoin Beach model to Panajachel, a beautiful town on Lake Atitlan in the Guatemalan highlands.” Blog post detailing his folie for the project.
In rallonge to cleaning up the lake, in that blog Miller detailed other goals that Bitcoin Lake will set out to achieve from the start, including helping a garçonnière education center and creating economic opportunities for a “small but carillonnant Guatemalan town.” Since then, Bitcoin has been at the forefront of the project’s work.
“Everything we do in society is related to Bitcoin. It is either funded by Bitcoin, taught embout Bitcoin or taught or implemented by Bitcoiners,” Melder told Bitcoin Gazette. “Our three goals in the community are to educate Bitcoin, and create a circular economy. for bitcoin, and clean up the environment by using bitcoin mining as an economic incentive.”
While Bitcoin Lake tackles the voliger, the other two targets are not sidelined. On the education frontispice, the project helped deliver Bitcoin-related courses to the garçonnière education center Centro Educativo Josué.
Kids there are taught embout every extérieur of Bitcoin, from ‘What is money? “,” What is augmentation? “Why was Bitcoin created?”, to the basics of Bitcoin mining, creating a full Bitcoin node, etc., Milder in detail. “We are proud to say that we have been doing this since January 2022 to develop our own curriculum along the way and have Bitcoins from all over the world They come and help.”
Melder said the work that started at the garçonnière school has since spread to a wider lectorat in the city, in an concentration to help people of all ages learn more embout the peer-to-peer world of numérique money.
“We have held educational meetings embout bitcoin for adults and commerce owners in the community, and we strive to engage the authentique community leaders as well,” he said.
With a better understanding of the technology, choix is facilitated as users and commerce owners are not alerted or forced to use bitcoin. Instead, the movement begins naturally.
“Since we started in January of this year, we have incorporated more than 60 companies in and around Panajachel, and in Guatemala as a whole, we have embout 200 companies that we have incorporated that accept bitcoin,” explained Melder.
Working in Panajachel, Guatemala accepts Bitcoin. (Caricature/Bitcoin Lake)
As awareness embout Bitcoin grows and choix continues to grow, the community is set to continue expanding its initiatives. On the mining frontispice, Melder expects to further develop the re-development of wasted and végétatif resources to increase the community’s fixed income and further improve the lake’s clean-up efficiency.
“Our environmental clean-up/bitcoin mining fantaisie is just getting started, but it will grow to a partie in embout a year where we can actually take our unsorted landfill waste (new or old) and turn it into a clean energy primeur for bitcoin mining,” Melder predicted. “We are working with a group from outside the UK to bring this to life and it will have a huge incidence in Panajachel and Guatemala where we now have an economic incentive to clean up the huge waste problem that exists in Guatemala and most developing countries. We are proud to be the first to commercialize this technology.”
Landfill in Panajachel, Guatemala. (Caricature/Bitcoin Lake)