A report presented to the Paraguayan Congress highlights the low level of employment associated with the country’s bitcoin mining activity. According to data from the Social Care Institute, the entire bitcoin mining industry is responsible for only 383 direct jobs, with over 40 companies not reporting any workers directly associated with their operations.

Paraguayan Bitcoin Mining Industry Registers Less Than 400 Workers

A report presented last week to the Chamber of Senators highlights the low employment level brought to the country by the Paraguayan bitcoin mining industry. The report, which takes data provided by the Social Care Institute (IPS), found that 66% of the bitcoin mining companies in the country register zero workers, making no contributions to the social system.

These 40 companies that run Bitcoin mining activities and have a contract with the National Power Administration of Paraguay (ANDE) can be operating illegally with social security services, or employing third-party companies for their operations, having no direct workers.

The report also found that the 20 mining companies that contribute to the IPS present a low number of jobs related to the amount of power used for their activities. The whole cryptocurrency industry in Paraguay would only generate 383 jobs, with a relation of 1.58 jobs per MW contracted.

Almost 50% of the bitcoin mining companies provided less than 1% of their electric bill to social care. This “exemplifies how harmful the large transnational extractive companies are to our hydroelectricity, worsening it at subsidized prices,” the document stresses.

It also hints at establishing a possible increment to the contributions of bitcoin mining companies for social care purposes, excluding smaller miners.

It assesses:

We could even consider having stricter measures for large consumers of such a Special Intensive Consumption Group and less drastic measures for small consumers of the same group.

In 2022, former president Mario Abdo vetoed a bill legalizing cryptocurrency mining in Paraguay after its approval in Congress. One of the reasons that Abdo presented for this decision was the “high consumption of energy, intensive use of capital, and low use of labor” of the bitcoin mining industry.