Bitcoin’s environmental and macroeconomic impact has led to cryptocurrency sweeping from niche policy matters to the thickness of Chilean presidential race, capturing all the key competitors dealing with assets, and the mining industry that underpins it (as potential voters rather than potential voters).
Bitcoin appears in Chile as the 2025 election issue
Daniel Batten, a venture capitalist at Climatechech, based in New Zealand, told followers on X that “Bitcoin is shaping itself as a Chilean election issue in 2025.” He added that serious candidates are not currently opposed to the technology, as “opposition to Bitcoin is like opposing the Internet: it’s like political suicide.”
Behind Batten’s assessment is a two-year, largely modest lobbying campaign led by Chilean software engineer-turned-policy advocate Andrés Villagran. Since 2023, Villagran has shepherded US strategist Dennis Porter, the chief executive of the Satoshi Action Fund, through the committee room in Santiago and the local capital, and pitched Bitcoin mining as an antidote to the country’s deteriorating renewable energy reduction problem. In a post on May 18th, he reported, “This week’s great progress in Chile! We met as presidential candidates in Bitcoin and its role in clean energy/efficiency. We are looking to participate in the program.”
Villagran’s point resonates with legislators who draft the strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) bill. This is a fragment that allows the central bank to hold Bitcoin along with gold and foreign currency. “In 2023, I embarked on an incredible journey… I will meet more than 20 Congressmen and several ministers,” he wrote earlier this year, emphasizing that additional sessions with the Treasury are being planned later this year.
Porter reinforced his message last week with a 40-minute keynote speech at the Chilefintech Forum 2025, calling the “crisis” that wastes six hours of sun and wind power each year a “crisis.” “Combining variable renewable power generation with variable loads like Bitcoin mining will absolutely eliminate reductions,” he told the audience, claiming that miners’ ability to lower on-demand is more grid-stabilizing than parasitism.
⚡⚡§@dennis_porter_ en #chilefintechforum2025: laminerÃadebitcoin puede revolucionar nuestro sistemaenergético. EnvÃa Ste video is absent from the public. llevamos bastante tiempo junto a dennis informando a mantionios, diputados y senadores de bitcoin
РAndr̩s Villagrane (@avillagran) May 15, 2025
The political class is gaining attention. Right-wing Republican Jose Antonio Casto and central right-wing Chile-Vamos coalition Evelyn Matote were tied to 17% in the latest CADEM survey, according to campaign aides with knowledge of briefings. On the left, the unity of the Chilean Agreement is scheduled for the June 29 primary, featuring Carolina Toja, Gonzalo Winter, Jiannet Jara and Jaime Mallett.
If votes become unstable six months before the first round on November 16th, campaign strategists say the debate could crystallize on June 20th, when the first nationally televised candidate forum is expected to devote its segments to energy pricing and digital assets. Villagran has confirmed that at least one candidate has already pledged records to raise the mining of Bitcoin that night.
It remains uncertain whether the SBR bill will move forward before the election. The central bank’s board has warned of “volatility and liquidity concerns” under the IMF preliminary control rules, and President Gabriel Borik’s administration remains publicly neutral. But the political costs – benefits have changed. As Batten said, Chilean politicians have “learned from the Democratic Party’s “debacle in the US” and are determined not to get caught up in the wrong aspects of technology that many voters now equate with innovation, cheap power and macrohedging.
If that calculation is passed, the November vote could mark the first time in Latin America that the major economy is heading for the vote with all viable presidential programs, including chapters on Bitcoin.
At the time of pressing, BTC was traded for $105,385.
Featured images created with dall.e, charts on tradingview.com
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