Laos Eyes Bitcoin Mining To Tackle Mounting Debt
Laos is exploring a brand new option to service the money owed from its decades-long hydropower build-out: turning extra electrical energy into Bitcoin. In a report revealed on September 17, the South China Morning Post framed the pivot bluntly: “Saddled with debt and surplus electrical energy, the ‘battery of Southeast Asia’ is eyeing energy-intensive crypto mining to show a revenue.” The article situates the transfer inside a dam-driven growth mannequin that has left Laos with energy it can not all the time promote and a mounting compensation schedule.
Why Laos Eyes Bitcoin Mining
The coverage logic is easy. Bitcoin mining converts electrons right into a globally liquid asset and may be sited straight at hydropower crops, mitigating transmission bottlenecks and absorbing seasonal surpluses. Laos has promoted electrical energy exports for years—SCMP notes energy accounted for roughly 1 / 4 of the nation’s exports final 12 months—but export offers and grids don’t all the time line up with era, exacerbating revenue-timing mismatches in opposition to hard-currency debt obligations from dam building.
According to SCMP “environmental campaigners view the flip to crypto as symptomatic of a flawed vitality coverage that has left Laos indebted and unable to dump its surplus energy.” The Chinese information report cites Witoon Permpongsacharoen, director of the Mekong Energy and Ecology Network: “Laos permitting electrical energy for use for cryptocurrency mining is clearly not one thing pushed by inner situations. It stems from the truth that Laos is closely indebted and unable to repay its money owed.”
If applied, this is able to not be Laos’s first embrace of digital-asset mining. In September 2021, the federal government launched a pilot program authorizing six corporations to mine and commerce Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies beneath regulated power-purchase phrases, a transfer extensively learn as an try and seize miners displaced by China’s crackdown.
However, the stance has seesawed amid hydrological stress and grid constraints: in August 2023, the state utility Électricité du Laos (EDL) halted electrical energy provide to Bitcoin miners citing drought and energy shortages; by May 2024, Reuters reported crypto information facilities made up “over a 3rd of the nation’s energy” consumption and contributed to outages, prompting authorities to cease approving new operations at the same time as they weighed proposals to stabilize provide.
The fiscal backdrop helps clarify the renewed curiosity. External public debt service is projected by the World Bank to common about $1.3 billion per 12 months over 2025–2028—round 9% of GDP yearly—conserving gross financing wants elevated as key hydropower belongings are nonetheless ramping. Separate reporting this 12 months underscored the pressure: a Chinese dam operator initiated a $555 million arbitration in opposition to EDL for alleged unpaid dues, highlighting the monetary pressures on the state energy sector.
Yet the “surplus energy” narrative just isn’t uniform. Hydropower output is risky, impacted by erratic rainfall and a warming local weather, whereas export pipelines stay politically and commercially advanced. Laos produces surplus electrical energy within the moist season however should import energy from neighboring international locations throughout the dry months. These structural frictions are exactly the niches the place cell, interruptible hundreds like Bitcoin mines can monetize stranded vitality—till the water runs low.
Analysts who champion “wasted renewables” see a broader sample. “Bhutan, Ethiopia, and now Laos use Bitcoin mining to monetize wasted renewable vitality,” Bitcoin local weather activist Daniel Batten wrote through X as protection of the SCMP story circulated, casting the technique as a part of a 2025 “vibe shift.”
Bhutan has openly leaned into hydro-powered mining this 12 months, calling bitcoin “a strategic battery” to arbitrage seasonal surpluses and fund growth; Ethiopia’s power utility has mentioned it generated about $55 million over 10 months by promoting surplus hydro to miners. Laos’s plan would slot into that template, albeit with extra fragile hydrology and balance-sheet constraints.
At press time, BTC traded at $117,228.
