Kingdom of Bhutan holds over 13,000 Bitcoins

Paro Taktshang, auch das Tigernest genannt, ist ein bekanntes buddhistisches Kloster in Bhutan. Bild von Mashrik Faiyaz via flickr.com. Lizenz: Creative Commons

Bhutan, a Buddhist, climate-neutral mountain country, holds Bitcoins worth around 730 million euros. The nation continuously earns Bitcoins through mining but sells only small portions of them.

It is well-known that El Salvador holds Bitcoins. Also, that other countries like China and the USA possess Bitcoins they have confiscated. But the fact that a small Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas is the real Bitcoin nation has gone largely unnoticed until now.

Arkham Intelligence, a kind of „community blockchain analyst“, recently pointed out that the platform also lists the addresses of the Royal Government of Bhutan. On these addresses, one can find 13,058 Bitcoin (727 million euros) and 656 Ether (1.4 million euros).

There is a daily influx of Bitcoins, usually from the miner Foundry or AntPool. Bhutan apparently earns its Bitcoins through mining. The „Dragon King“ Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the fifth Druk of the Wangchuck dynasty, began four years ago, writes Forbes, „to quietly transform the country into a crypto Shangri-La“ by setting up mining farms.

In November 2023, the magazine determined through satellite images where the mining facilities are located. They are situated at several locations in the mountains, with one also housed in the former „Education City,“ a failed educational project of the country.

The Bitcoin mines are very likely powered by hydroelectricity. Bhutan is the first climate-neutral country on earth. It generates its electricity through hydropower, of which it apparently has more than enough. Bhutan exports power to India and Bangladesh, thereby importing foreign currency and financing large parts of the national budget. Bitcoin mining now allows it to transform its excess power directly into foreign currency without exports and dependency on foreign countries.

Bhutan began accumulating Bitcoins at the end of 2022. Since May 2024, however, the holdings have remained largely stable. The inflows from mining are offset by withdrawals to exchanges like Binance and Kraken. Consequently, Bitcoin evidently already covers parts of the national budget.

Bhutan’s state revenues amount to only 640 million dollars per year. In the past 12 months, the country transferred almost 900 Bitcoins to Kraken, which today equates to about 56 million dollars. Thus, the government is already financing a significant part of the budget through mining.

Bhutan is a small, sparsely populated country where nearly 800,000 inhabitants generate a GDP of 2.7 billion US dollars. This makes the Bitcoin holdings all the more remarkable: every citizen of Bhutan owns 0.013 Bitcoin. This equates to 810 dollars and thus almost a quarter of the annual per capita GDP.

To achieve such a proportion for Germany, our government would need to accumulate around 17 million Bitcoins. Relatively speaking, the lead that Bhutan has as a Bitcoin nation cannot be caught up to.