Paraguay Bets on Bitcoin with Seized Rigs-A Grim State Gamble

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Paraguay’s state‑owned electricity, that stern, humming creature called ANDE, has laid a pact-an MoU, as the respectable call it-with Morphware, a firm whose name sounds like a signal fired from a candle and some gears. The bargain promises a government‑run Bitcoin mine, fed not by virtue but by thousands of confiscated rigs and by hydro from Itaipú, generous as fate and twice as indifferent. The air is thick with power and doubt.

What Does This Entail?

In a move almost indecent in its novelty, the state power company musters itself to become a miner of coins. ANDE has signed a formal accord with Morphware to forge a state‑run program, drawing from two patient gifts: seized mining rigs and the forgiving current from the Itaipú dam.

Practically, ANDE will shelter and possess the enterprise, as if the state could cradle a secret, cold machine’s appetite. Rather than selling energy at merciful treaty‑defined terms, the utility will divert a portion into mining facilities it controls. Morphware will pose as the cautious mentor, not the ravenous investor: as founder Kenso Trabing says, because ANDE has no experience in mining Bitcoin, their role is merely advisory, a faint whisper in a thunderstorm.

The pilot will lash together roughly 1,500 seized rigs within the old utility halls by the substations, spaces that might become modest sanctuaries for hash‑rate if one squints hard enough. They’ll be fitted with vents, transformers, meters, and the dreary tact of surveillance that follows every dream of modern power.

Seizing Background

This decree arises from a long season of raids, beginning in the early days of 2024, when ANDE hunted for unmetered, troublesome connections that flavored the air with risk and electricity. Most of the machines destined for this theater were ripped from the shadows between May and June 2024, as inspectors sharpened their knives in the hotbeds of mining.

In Salto del Guairá, alone, ANDE seized 2,738 rigs after uncovering an unmetered, voracious connection that siphoned roughly 1.1 billion guaraníes-about 146,000 dollars-each month in stolen current, and there were numerous others that swelled the confiscated army of ASICs toward thirty thousand.

Another State Turning To Bitcoin

Paraguay’s improvisation lands among a handful of governments flirting with the illusion that energy policy and hash rate are two sides of the same coin. El Salvador has already wed Bitcoin to its toolkit, channeling geothermal fire from state plants into mining dens and stockpiling the coins in a government ledger as part of its grand, volcanic spectacle and its so‑called volcano bonds. Further east, Bhutan’s sovereign fund has quietly fed hydro power into mining since at least 2019, gathering Bitcoin on the balance sheet and, more recently, backing digital assets and a “mindfulness city” dream.

Paraguay’s ANDE-Morphware experiment is the hydro‑rich, Latin American version of that script: keep the energy domestic, own the infrastructure, and let the state, not just private miners, taste the upside.

The cover image from ChatGPT, the BTCUSD chart from Tradingview

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2026-03-05 07:17