Paraguay’s state‑owned electricity monopoly, Administración Nacional de Electricidad (ANDE), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with infrastructure firm Morphware to launch a government‑run Bitcoin mining program powered by thousands of confiscated mining machines and surplus hydroelectric power.
What Does This Entail?In a first‑of‑its‑kind 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‑run mining program that uses two things the country already has in abundance: seized mining rigs and cheap hydroelectric power from the Itaipú dam.
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.
Seizing BackgroundThis decision follows a series of nationwide raids since early 2024, as ANDE moved against unmetered and fraudulent high‑voltage connections used by illegal miners. Most of the machines going into this program were seized between May and June 2024, when authorities intensified inspections in mining hotspots.
In Salto del Guairá alone, ANDE confiscated 2,738 mining rigs after detecting an unmetered high‑load connection worth roughly 1.1 billion guaraníes (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.
Another State Turning To BitcoinParaguay’s ANDE–Morphware experiment is the hydro‑rich, 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.
Cover image from ChatGPT, BTCUSD chart from Tradingview
