Bhutan’s state-owned Druk Holdings touts digital assets as one of its focus investment groups.

• Bhutan, a Himalayan nation with fewer than 1 million people, has accumulated over $780 million in bitcoin, representing nearly a third of its GDP, through mining operations run by state-owned Druk Holdings.
• The mining operations are linked to Bitdeer, which has been expanding mining facilities in the country and aiming for a 600 megawatt capacity by 2025.
• Bhutan's investment in digital assets is part of a broader strategy by Druk Holdings to diversify revenue streams, with recent wallet activity showing both deposits and withdrawals, including significant transactions with exchanges like Kraken.

A picturesque landlocked nation between India and China has amassed bitcoin (BTC) holdings worth over $780 million in the past few years, nearly one-third of its gross domestic product (GDP) and the fourth-largest state-owned stash, according to on-chain analytics tool Arkham.

Bhutan, nestled in the Himalayas, considers its fewer than 900,000 citizens’ happiness a better measure of the country's well-being than money. It is the second nation after El Salvador to officially hold BTC, in this case as part of the state-owned Druk Holdings fund.

"Bhutan has constructed Bitcoin mining facilities in multiple locations, with the largest being on the site of the now-defunct Education City project," Arkham said in an X post. "Unlike most governments, Bhutan’s BTC does not come from law enforcement asset seizures, but from Bitcoin mining operations, which have ramped up dramatically since early 2023."

These mines are likely related to mining giant Bitdeer (BTDR). In 2023, the Singapore-based company said it would work with the Bhutan government to establish cryptocurrency mining operations in Southeast Asia and raised over $500 million for the venture. Shortly afterward, Bitdeer said it had built a 100 megawatt (MW) facility in the first phase of the company's project.

In April 2024, Bitdeer said it was working on expanding Bhutan's mining capacity to 600MW in 2025.

Bhutan, which is smaller than Switzerland, has little economic diversification and nascent private sector development. It relies on hydropower, tourism and agriculture for revenue. Gross domestic product, the value of all finished goods and services made in the country, was just under $3 billion in 2022, about half that of the Maldives.

But Druk is pushing into various sectors to expand the country’s coffers. Its site shows “digital assets” as one of the primary focus areas in a technology-driven investment strategy, including hydropower projects and metaverses.

The Druk wallets tracked by Arkham show brisk deposit and withdrawal activity in the past few weeks. It has received up to 2 BTC from Foundry, another miner, and other unidentified Bitcoin addresses several times over the past week.

It has periodically sent bitcoin to other addresses and sometimes to crypto exchanges: A transaction from early July shows a tranche of over $25 million worth of BTC was sent to crypto exchange Kraken, where it was likely sold.

Edited by Sheldon Reback.

Source: Shaurya Malwa – coindesk.com