El Salvador's president says the country has mined its first bitcoin using volcano energy

• El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele said the country had mined its first bitcoin with volcano energy on Friday.
• Bukele said earlier this week the volcano energy project was underway.
• Bitcoin mining is hugely energy intensive, and consumes more power in a year than the Philippines.

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele said in a tweet Friday that the Central American country had mined its first bitcoin using clean energy from volcanos.

Bukele tweeted that 0.00483976 bitcoin, worth around $230 right now, had been mined. Bitcoin rose by around 10% on the day to stand at ​​$47,485 by 07:00 a.m. ET.

Many in the tweets comments marked this a momentous occasion. Using renewable volcano power to mine bitcoin means the process to extract coins from blocks of data in the network is less carbon-intensive. Bitcoin mining usually consumes more power in a year than the Philippines, according to Cambridge's bitcoin electricity consumption index.

"We're still testing and installing, but this is officially the first #Bitcoin mining from the #volcanode," the president said.

Bukele said El Salvador had also taken steps towards getting its bitcoin volcano project underway in an announcement on Twitter earlier in the week.

The president first said in June he would ask the country's state-owned geothermal electric company, LaGeo SA de CV, to construct a 100% clean bitcoin-mining plan using energy from volcanos.

El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender in September. The rollout began September 7, after the country purchased 400 bitcoin.