Paraguay state’s electricity monopoly, Administración Nacional de Electricidad (ANDE), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with infrastructure company Morphware to launch a government-run Bitcoin mining program powered by thousands of seized mining machines and surplus hydropower.
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In a first of its kind, Paraguay’s state energy company is about to become a Bitcoin miner. ANDE has signed a formal agreement with Morphware to establish a state mining program that uses two things the country already has in abundance: impounded mining platforms and cheap hydropower from the Itaipú Dam.
In practice, ANDE will host and own the mining activities. Instead of exporting that energy at low treaty-set prices, the utility will route some of it to Bitcoin mining facilities it controls. Morphware will act as a technical advisor rather than as a speculative partner: said Morphware founder and CEO Kenso TrabingBecause ANDE has no experience in mining Bitcoin, the company’s role will be “an advisory role.”
During the pilot phase, approximately 1,500 impound miners will be connected to existing utility buildings next to substations, which can be converted into simple mining facilities with ventilation, transformers, distribution units and good meters.
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Grab background
This decision follows a series of nationwide raids since early 2024, when ANDE took action against uncontrolled and fraudulent high-voltage connections used by illegal miners. Most of the machines involved in this program were seized between May and June 2024, as authorities stepped up inspections in mining hotspots.
In Salto del Guairá alone, ANDE seized 2,738 mining rigs after detecting an unmetered, high-load connection worth approximately 1.1 billion guarantees (approximately $146,000) in stolen power every month, in addition to dozens of similar operations that brought the total stock of seized ASICs almost to 30,000 units.
Another state turning to Bitcoin
Paraguay’s move joins a small but growing group of states that appear to be trying to translate energy policy into hashrate. El Salvador has already included Bitcoin in its official toolkit, divert geothermal energy from state-owned power plants to mining facilities and adding these coins to a government-controlled BTC supply alongside its ‘volcano bond’ ambitions, as reported by our sister website Bitcoinist. Further east, Bhutan’s sovereign wealth fund is quietly exploiting hydropower mining since at least 2019, using excess electricity from the dams to accumulate Bitcoin on the kingdom’s balance sheet and, more recently, to support new projects in digital assets and ‘mindfulness city’.
The ANDE-Morphware experiment in Paraguay is the watery, Latin American version of that same playbook: keep the energy domestic, own the infrastructure and let the state, not just private miners, take the positive side.
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