The Virunga National Park in Africa is located at the eastern tip of the Congo Basin. It has long been in the public eye as the place where mountain gorillas still live. The park, located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been tormented by the country’s war situation in recent decades. In recent years, the public security situation, the Ebola epidemic and the COVID-19 epidemic have caused disruptions. By the way, Virunga National Park is the second largest tropical rainforest in the world and is home to a third of all mountain gorillas still alive.
Virunga bet on double or nothing – with success
In recent years, the decline in tourism has dramatically reduced revenues, so the park had to look for a new source of income. And this became bitcoin mining. By MIT Technology Review made In a report, the director of the park, Emmanuel de Merode, said that the number of tourists had decreased by 40%. And the government cannot and does not want to replace the lost income. Since they were completely on their own, an urgent solution was needed. Thus, Virunga’s hydroelectric power plant was used to operate a bitcoin mining machine worth roughly $200,000. The mining machines were set up in Luviro, a town on the border of Virunga, with the help of crypto-investor Sébeastien Gouspillou. By the way, he has already appeared alongside the Salvadoran Bitcoin Ciy project and started other African bitcoin mining projects.
This all happened at the end of 2020, and since then the nearly 500 mining machines in the 10 green containers have been continuously generating income. In the meantime, the park’s staff liked the crypto world so much that they obtained almost 1.2 million dollars from an NFT collection. This was launched at Christie’s with rare mountain gorillas from Virunga. What is important is that only three of the 10 container mining machines belong to Virunga, the remaining seven belong to the investor, who in turn pays for the electricity for the park. According to the park’s director, bitcoin mining generated roughly $500,000 in revenue for Virunga in one year. From this, they were able to finance quite a few projects and jobs. In addition, the criticism of environmentalists does not stand up here either, since the energy comes from a completely clean source. And the director estimates that if the price of bitcoin falls very low, they will still be able to make a profit due to the cheapness of energy.