Paraguay Plans First State-Run Bitcoin Mining Project

Paraguay’s state power utility ANDE has signed a memorandum of understanding with crypto infrastructure firm Morphware, setting up a formal cooperation framework that explicitly includes exploring Bitcoin mining as a national-level opportunity tied to the country’s energy and digital infrastructure strategy. The move matters because it signals a shift from Paraguay merely hosting private miners to the state evaluating a more direct, utility-controlled model. Morphware framed the MoU as a starting point for “analysis and development of initiatives related to digital assets, advanced processing infrastructure, and strategic energy driven technology opportunities in Paraguay,” with Bitcoin mining positioned as one candidate use case inside that broader mandate. The company said the agreement creates an “official path” for technical evaluation and project development “under Paraguay’s legal and regulatory framework,” language that reads less like a one-off pilot announcement and more like a governmental process being put on rails. In Morphware CEO Kenso Trabing’s telling, the economic logic is straightforward: put stranded or underutilized electricity to work, and keep the deployment inside regulated sites controlled by the utility. “ANDE has unlocked a powerful new asset, and Morphware is here to turn that asset into a new revenue engine for Paraguay. By redeploying Bitcoin miners on regulated, utility controlled sites, we can transform unused electricity into productive compute that serves both the Bitcoin network and the global AI economy ,” Trabing wrote. “This is what the future of midstream electricity looks like: grids that do not just deliver power, but own a stake in the digital infrastructure they enable.” The reference to “midstream electricity” and “productive compute” is doing double duty. It links Bitcoin mining to a more general pitch: high-density power-to-compute infrastructure that can, in theory, flex between mining and adjacent workloads, particularly as the “AI data center” narrative continues to bleed into the public-market mining story globally. Seized Bitcoin Miners Enter The Conversation While Morphware’s statement did not publish deployment numbers, the MoU language about “redeploying” miners arrives amid an enforcement backdrop: Paraguay has been seizing ASIC hardware tied to alleged illegal operations . Trabing told Bitcoin Magazine that ANDE is exploring turning seized equipment into Paraguay’s first government-run Bitcoin operation in partnership with Morphware. According to Trabing, the Paraguayan government is currently holding around 30,000 seized Bitcoin miners, many of them taken from facilities accused of electricity theft or tariff fraud. “They’re literally stacked to the ceiling,” Trabing told Bitcoin Magazine, describing government warehouses filled with idle ASIC machines. “They have no experience mining Bitcoin. Our role is an advisory role.” Morphware’s proposal, now formalized in the memorandum with ANDE, is to redeploy those machines at utility-controlled sites rather than leaving them idle. The initial phase would reportedly involve around 1,500 confiscated miners, installed near existing electrical substations where infrastructure already exists to handle large energy loads. Under the structure being discussed, ANDE would retain ownership of the machines and operate the sites directly, while Morphware would provide technical guidance and training for utility staff. The company’s role, according to Trabing, is primarily operational support rather than revenue participation. “This is about regulated, utility-controlled sites,” he said. “Not people hiding in the countryside.” At press time, BTC traded at $68,644.