It has been nearly half a year since Bitcoin set its historical high. During this six months of decline, known state governments and entities holding Bitcoin have almost not sold their holdings. However, we have discovered a very interesting pair of counterpositions:

El Salvador VS Bhutan

Over the course of nearly half a year, El Salvador's Bitcoin holdings increased from 6,376 coins to 7,600 coins, while Bhutan's holdings decreased from 6,234 coins to 4,000 coins.

This selling pressure from the Himalayas is not large, but it is very mysterious. Bhutan, a relatively closed Buddhist nation located between China and India, only opened to foreign tourists in 1974, introduced television and the internet in 1999, and transitioned from a monarchy to a constitutional monarchy in 2008. To this day, the official use of plastic bags is still prohibited.

In this country, the peak Bitcoin holding reached 13,000 coins, and the current 4,000 coins are already a result of selling. I think you might have many questions, but the first question that needs to be addressed is:

Amitabha, Bhutan benefactor, where did your Bitcoin come from?

Hydropower, a God-given Gift

As a Buddhist country, Bhutan has once been very zen.

In 1972, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck of Bhutan proposed the "Gross National Happiness" concept. Indeed, this world's famous "Are you happy?" evaluation system was first proposed by Bhutan.

With the Buddha in the heart, Amitabha, money and fame are worldly possessions. In the first "World Happiness Map" published by the University of Leicester in 2006, Bhutan ranked 8th.

However, having the Buddha in mind still requires living. Bhutan only removed itself from the "least developed countries" list in December 2023. In the "World Happiness Report" released by the United Nations, Bhutan's highest ranking was 84th in 2014, and by 2019, it further declined to 95th.

Every country has its own advantages, and Bhutan's advantage lies in hydropower. Situated on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, Bhutan has numerous rivers, abundant annual rainfall, and significant elevation differences. Bhutan's theoretical hydropower potential is estimated at 30,000 to 40,000 MW, while the currently developed installed capacity is only about 2,300 to 4,000 MW, realizing only 5-10% of its potential.

In summer, Bhutan has an inexhaustible supply of electricity. In 2025, Bhutan's summer peak generation capacity is expected to be about 3,600 MW, while the corresponding summer daily demand peak is only about 900-1,000 MW.

With over 70% of unused electricity, it is natural for them to find a way to generate revenue. Bhutan sells this electricity to India. Thus, hydropower has undoubtedly become Bhutan's absolute economic pillar, accounting for about 17-20% of GDP, with hydropower exports contributing over 63% of total exports.

However, this trade with India is somewhat reluctant on Bhutan's part. Since 1961, India has dominated almost all hydropower station construction in Bhutan and has adopted a funding model of "60% grants + 40% loans." Simply put, India pays most of the costs to help you build power plants, but the price is that you must prioritize and sell the generated electricity back to India at lower prices.

This resource-for-engineering exchange model has tightly locked Bhutan's economic lifeline into the rupee settlement system. Although Bhutan holds energy, what it receives is only rupees that circulate in the neighboring country, making it difficult to convert directly into the US dollars needed for modern industry on the international market.

How to break the deadlock?

Turning Hydropower into Bitcoin

The antidote Bhutan found is Bitcoin mining.

Around 2019 to 2020 (when Bitcoin was about $5,000), Bhutan began secretly testing a path called "energy digitalization" — using surplus hydropower for Bitcoin mining.

In 2019, King Wangchuk of Bhutan stated, "As a small country, we need to become a smart nation — this is not an option, but a necessity. Technology is the essential tool for achieving this vision."

In 2025, Bhutan's Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay publicly stated: "When electricity prices are good, we sell to India; when electricity prices are bad, we stay and mine Bitcoin, which is very strategic."

In addition to surplus hydropower, Bhutan's unique climatic conditions, especially in the central high-altitude regions with an average annual temperature of only 5.5°C, also provide a natural cooling advantage for mining, significantly reducing mining energy consumption costs.

Moreover, the Bitcoin mining industry perfectly aligns with Bhutan's environmental and religious concepts as a Buddhist country. Bhutan's constitution mandates maintaining a forest coverage rate of 60%, limiting the development of traditional heavy industries. However, hydropower mining is a "hidden industry" that emits no greenhouse gases and does not damage ecology, so mining Bitcoin does not contradict the teachings of the Buddha. In contrast, the development of cryptocurrency in Islamic countries faces challenges — Islamic law prohibits usury (Riba) and gambling (Gharar). Due to the volatility of Bitcoin prices and lack of backing by physical assets, some Islamic scholars (like the Islamic Council of Syria) have issued fatwas declaring Bitcoin as "haram" (forbidden).

Using surplus hydropower to mine and mine. Through Bitcoin, Bhutan found a way to break through the "rupee blockade" for economic development. However, how did such a relatively closed Buddhist country find a way to break into the modern financial realm of cryptocurrency?

Bhutan's "Bitcoin Operator"

Bhutan's Bitcoin mining is not an impulsive act of the king or some fervent politician, but a carefully planned "alternative investment" strategy by the professional technocrats of its sovereign wealth fund Druk Holding and Investments (DHI).

The current CEO of DHI, Ujjwal Deep Dahal, is the core operator behind Bhutan's Bitcoin mining initiative. He is an electrical engineer with a strong background in electricity and water resources. Before his tenure at DHI, he had a profound understanding of Bhutan's hydropower resources' advantages and limitations.

In Dahal's view, Bhutan faces severe geographic and demographic disadvantages ("Geography is a challenge for us, demography is a challenge for us"). He sees technology as the only way for Bhutan's leapfrog development. In 2019, Dahal pushed DHI to begin secretly investing in Bitmain mining machines. His logic is very clear: utilizing Bhutan's "waste electricity" during the summer flood season, which cannot be exported or consumed, to mine "digital gold" as a diversified supplement to the national foreign exchange reserves.

In a relatively closed Buddhist country, the individuals who can keenly seize historical opportunities in Bitcoin are certainly not ordinary people but technocrats with top international educational backgrounds. Dahal's growth trajectory is also a typical reflection of Bhutan's elite class. As the child of a high-ranking government official, Dahal enjoyed the best educational resources in Bhutan and received the government's "Elite Scholarship" to study abroad. He received his early higher education in India and then went to Canada and the United States for further studies, even serving as a researcher in the SPURS (Special and Urban Research Studies Program) at MIT.

It was the cutting-edge technological concepts he encountered at MIT, combined with Bhutan's intrinsic energy endowments, that prompted him to propose the idea of using hydropower for Bitcoin mining through "electricity price arbitrage" to Bhutan's leadership during the low Bitcoin price period in 2019.

All sentient beings are equal, yet not all sentient beings are equal.

A National Gamble

Since this is for revenue generation, the Bitcoin mined from surplus hydropower "for free" must naturally be monetized to contribute to the state's foreign exchange reserves. The question of "Why does Bhutan want to sell Bitcoin?" has now been answered, but we can explore even deeper.

In June 2023, facing a severe civil servant exodus crisis, the Bhutanese government utilized about $72 million in Bitcoin reserves to give all civil servants a 50% salary increase.

On December 17, 2025, Bhutan's National Day. Bhutan made another bold decision to use its hoarded maximum of 10,000 Bitcoins (valued at about $1 billion at that time) as the seed fund for the country's future, injecting it all into the massive special economic zone that is still on the drawing board — "Gyaltsen Mindfulness City (GMC)."

The financial model of GMC is considered "mad" in macroeconomics. According to reports from Time Magazine and SCMP, the estimated total investment for GMC is as high as $100 billion, while Bhutan's GDP in 2025 is only about $3.4 billion, making the estimated total investment about 30 times Bhutan's GDP in 2025.

Even more exaggerated, from the preliminary vision announcement of this large project in December 2023 to its official commencement in 2025, over two years have passed, and it can still only be said that the project is in the "infrastructure construction phase."

These two actions can easily confuse people — clearly, Bhutan once had 13,000 Bitcoins, why not use the earned dollars to support other domestic industries, but just give money to civil servants, and then use 10,000 Bitcoins to build a special zone that may yield no returns within 5-10 years?

Bhutan is also very helpless.

In Bhutan, the government is the largest single employer. Due to a weak private economy, the operation of the state machinery completely relies on the civil servant system. However, in recent years, Bhutan has faced inflation and talent loss. Raising civil servants' salaries is essentially to maintain the operation of the state machinery and prevent government paralysis. The profits from Bitcoin mining are seen as "lifeline money" to retain the country's core talents — first addressing "stopping the bleeding," then discussing "development."

Moreover, for Bhutan, supporting domestic industries has considerable difficulty. Bhutan lacks the industrial soil to absorb funding. Without infrastructure, logistics advantages, and a tiny domestic market (only about 800,000 people), even if the government throws hundreds of millions of dollars to the private sector, it cannot magically create a manufacturing or technology industry. The funds will likely flow into real estate speculation or become imported consumer goods, thereby consuming valuable foreign exchange reserves.

Thus, the commitment of 10,000 Bitcoins for GMC can be regarded as a sort of "helpless gamble." GMC is not a tourist city but a "special zone" located in the lowlands of southern Bhutan bordering India, planning to establish an independent legal system (referencing Singapore and Abu Dhabi) to attract global capital.

It’s like the "Cayman Islands under the Himalayas." By collaborating with institutions like Matrixport, it offers offshore trust, digital asset legalization, and an independent judicial jurisdiction based on Anglo-American law. The Bhutanese government realizes that under the current system and geographic constraints, the prospects for gradual reform remain murky. Attempting to break the single reliance on India may be their best option at present.

Although the estimated total investment scale of GMC reaches $100 billion, it does not mean that the Bhutanese government truly intends to bet all this money. Their strategy is to "build nests to attract phoenixes" — using Bitcoin profits and the national sovereign fund (DHI) to complete the first phase of infrastructure construction (such as airport expansion and bridge building), and then attracting global tycoons and consortia for subsequent investments by giving away development rights in the special zone.

Bhutan is not only "gambling" off-chain; on-chain, their operations are far from just "mining coins - holding coins - selling coins." Bhutan has not kept all its assets in cold wallets to gather dust; instead, it has converted a large amount of ETH into liquid staking tokens and deposited them as collateral on the decentralized lending platform Aave, borrowing large quantities of stablecoins.

Earlier this year, Bhutan faced a perilous "de-leveraging" crisis. As ETH prices fell, the value of their collateral on Aave shrank, and the healthy factor of their loan approached the liquidation line of 1.0. To save themselves, DHI was forced to urgently sell 26,535 ETH (about $60 million) in early February 2026 to repay loans of up to $137 million in USDT. This action pulled their health factor back above the safe line of 1.10, preserving about 78,245 stETH positions.

In fact, we can trace Bhutan's "gamble" further back — because while Bhutan has abundant electricity for Bitcoin mining, they also need mining machines.

Bhutan mainly procures equipment from Bitmain. According to customs records and media tracking, the primary imports are from Bitmain's Antminer S19 series (including S19 Pro, S19 XP, etc.). After 2023, with a partnership established with Bitdeer (co-founded by Bitmain's former co-founder Wu Jihan), Bitdeer also directly delivered tens of thousands of advanced mining machines to Bhutan.

According to evaluations from institutions like Forbes, from 2021 to 2023, Bhutan's total capital expenditure on crypto mining facilities is about $500 million. This directly led to Bhutan's foreign exchange reserves dropping from $1.27 billion to over $500 million, a dangerous level during the same period.

According to the "Bhutan Macro-Economic Outlook" published by the World Bank in April 2024 and the IMF's Fourth Review Report in 2024, Bhutan's current account deficit (CAD) soared to 34.3% of GDP in the 2022/23 fiscal year. The World Bank specifically pointed out —

"A significant national cryptocurrency mining investment has resulted in a decline in international reserves and expanded the CAD to 34.3% of GDP. In 2022 alone, funds equivalent to about 9% of GDP were used to import crypto equipment."

A country risking 9% of its GDP on Bitcoin could be one of the most insane gambles in human history.

Fortunately, Bhutan's gamble has now passed the painful period. In 2025, as Bitcoin prices reached new historical highs, Bhutan's financial situation saw significant improvement. According to the IMF's latest "Fourth Review Report" released in January 2026, "Bhutan's foreign exchange reserves have significantly strengthened, thanks to a reduction in crypto mining-related imports, an increase in remittances, and rises in tourism and hydropower income." Bhutan's CAD is expected to narrow significantly from a peak of 34.3% to 8.62% in the 2025/26 fiscal year. This indicates that the painful period of "buying mining machines" has passed, transitioning into a "production and monetization period."

As a nation, Bhutan's painful period seems to be over. But as individuals, have the lives of Bhutanese people improved because of Bitcoin?

Fortunes of the Nation and Its People

The "2022 Labor Force Survey Report" from Bhutan's National Statistics Bureau (NSB) clearly shows that the youth unemployment rate in Bhutan was 28.6% in 2022. By 2025, this figure had dropped to 18%.

From the data, the Bitcoin mining industry has indeed improved the lives of Bhutanese people. However, for Bhutanese, living in Bhutan still feels hopeless.

It is estimated that around 66,000 Bhutanese live overseas, with the vast majority in Australia. For a country with a population of only about 800,000, this number represents nearly 8% of the population.

In contrast, only about 3.6% of the global population lives outside their country of birth. In India, this proportion is 2.5%, and in Pakistan, it is 2.8%.

It is essential to know that among those unemployed in Bhutan in 2025, the youth proportion reached 45.1%. This means that the number of Bhutanese living abroad is nearly equal to the number of unemployed youth in Bhutan.

Even living in urban areas of Bhutan does not guarantee better job prospects due to urban development. Among unemployed youth, 57.2% live in cities.

Each year, the number of Bhutanese students and professionals seeking education and jobs in countries like Australia and Canada steadily grows, and this trend has caught the attention of government leaders. Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay expressed that many of the 66,000 Bhutanese expatriates are experienced civil servants, teachers, nurses, and other professionals.

"We cannot ask civil servants not to resign, nor can we stop people from leaving this country. I cannot guarantee that professionals will not resign, and when they do, they often mention poor working conditions, which may be the fact."

Chimi Dorji, the president of the Bhutanese Association in Perth, Australia, stated that there are over 20,000 Bhutanese residents in Perth alone. He and his wife moved to Australia in 2019, and before that, he was a forestry officer in Bhutan.

He said, "Many Bhutanese residing in Australia are still seeking permanent residency because they plan to settle down and not return home."

Tashi Zam left Bhutan for Australia with her boyfriend in 2018. When they graduated in 2015-2016, they hadn't even imagined traveling abroad:

"Our initial dream was to find a suitable job and settle down in Bhutan."

Over the past two years, they exhausted all means to seek employment but found nothing. Eventually, their family pooled money to encourage them to marry so they could apply for jobs together.

"Looking back now, our choice at that time was correct. We are now earning well and can help our family members at home."

The mining sites are highly automated, and GMC serves foreign elites; Bitcoin is not a panacea for rescuing Bhutanese from severe unemployment crises. Bhutan has jumped directly from an agrarian society to a financial society, missing the manufacturing/service industry phase that typically absorbs a large workforce.

This country ascends in the field of cryptocurrency, yet its people still face upheaval in their everyday lives.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。