{"id":10321,"date":"2026-03-05T05:11:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T05:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bitcotasks.com\/blog\/from-contraband-to-cash-flow-paraguay-to-mine-bitcoin-with-30000-seized-rigs\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T05:11:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T05:11:26","slug":"from-contraband-to-cash-flow-paraguay-to-mine-bitcoin-with-30000-seized-rigs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcotasks.com\/blog\/from-contraband-to-cash-flow-paraguay-to-mine-bitcoin-with-30000-seized-rigs\/","title":{"rendered":"From Contraband to Cash Flow? Paraguay To Mine Bitcoin With 30,000 Seized Rigs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paraguay\u2019s state\u2011owned electricity monopoly, Administraci\u00f3n Nacional de Electricidad (ANDE), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with infrastructure firm Morphware to launch a government\u2011run Bitcoin mining program powered by thousands of confiscated mining machines and surplus hydroelectric power.<\/p>\n

What Does This Entail?<\/h2>\n

In a first\u2011of\u2011its\u2011kind move, Paraguay state power company is about to become a Bitcoin miner. ANDE has signed a formal agreement with Morphware to to build a state\u2011run mining program that uses two things the country already has in abundance: seized mining rigs and cheap hydroelectric power from the Itaip\u00fa dam.<\/p>\n

In practice, ANDE will host and own the mining operations. Instead of exporting that energy at low, treaty\u2011defined prices, the utility will route part of it into Bitcoin mining facilities it controls. Morphware will act as a technical advisor rather than a speculative partner: according to Morphware founder and CEO Kenso Trabing<\/a>, because ANDE has no experience mining Bitcoin, the company\u2019s role will be \u201can advisory one.<\/p>\n

The pilot phase will plug in about 1,500 seized miners at existing utility buildings located next to substations, which can be converted into basic mining facilities with ventilation, transformers, distribution units, and proper metering.<\/p>\n

Seizing Background<\/p>\n

This decision follows a series of nationwide raids since early 2024, as ANDE moved against unmetered and fraudulent high\u2011voltage connections used by illegal miners.\u00a0 Most of the machines going into this program were seized between May and June 2024, when authorities intensified inspections in mining hotspots.<\/p>\n

In Salto del Guair\u00e1 alone, ANDE confiscated 2,738 mining rigs after detecting an unmetered high\u2011load connection worth roughly 1.1 billion guaran\u00edes (around 146,000 dollars) in stolen power every month, alongside dozens of similar operations that pushed the total stockpile of seized ASICs close to 30,000 units.<\/p>\n

Another State Turning To Bitcoin<\/h2>\n

Paraguay\u2019s move slots into a small but growing group of states that appear to be trying to turn energy policy into hash rate. El Salvador has already folded Bitcoin into its official toolkit, pointing geothermal power from state\u2011run plants into mining facilities<\/a> and adding those coins to a government\u2011controlled BTC stockpile alongside its \u201cvolcano bond\u201d ambitions, as reported by our sister website Bitcoinist.<\/a> Further east, Bhutan\u2019s sovereign wealth fund has quietly operated hydro\u2011powered mining<\/a> since at least 2019, using surplus electricity from its dams to accumulate Bitcoin on the kingdom\u2019s balance sheet and, more recently, to back new digital\u2011asset and \u201cmindfulness city\u201d projects.<\/a><\/p>\n

Paraguay\u2019s ANDE\u2013Morphware experiment is the hydro\u2011rich, Latin American version of that same playbook: keep the energy domestic, own the infrastructure, and let the state, not just private miners, capture the upside.<\/p>\n

\"Bitcoin,<\/p>\n

Cover image from ChatGPT, BTCUSD chart from Tradingview<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paraguay\u2019s state\u2011owned electricity monopoly, Administraci\u00f3n Nacional de Electricidad (ANDE), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with infrastructure firm Morphware to launch a government\u2011run Bitcoin mining program powered by thousands of confiscated mining machines and surplus hydroelectric power. What Does This Entail? In a first\u2011of\u2011its\u2011kind move, Paraguay state power company is about to become a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[65,108,73,70],"class_list":["post-10321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bitcoin","tag-bitcoin","tag-bitcoin-price","tag-btc","tag-btcusd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcotasks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcotasks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcotasks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcotasks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcotasks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcotasks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcotasks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcotasks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcotasks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcotasks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}