Little Bhutan may already be a massive Bitcoin whale

Get all important market news and expert opinions in one place with our daily newsletter. Receive a comprehensive summary of today’s top stories straight to your inbox. Sign up here!

(Kitco News) – Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan nation sandwiched between Asian super-giants India and China, may already be a major player in crypto holdings and Bitcoin mining, according to several recent reports.

The kingdom confirmed to Forbes on April 30 that it has been using its significant hydropower resources to mine Bitcoin for years, flying under the radar since as long ago as 2017, even as newer crypto-adopting countries like El Salvador face immense scrutiny.

A new report from Bloomberg that Bhutan’s investment arm, Druk Holding & Investments, has partnered with Nasdaq-listed Bitdeer Technologies Group to create a $500 million fund to further develop the country’s crypto mining industry has many wondering how many Bitcoins they have mined , and how much mining has done to date.

“It’s important for us to look at assets that are low volume, high value, or digital assets for that matter, and try to position ourselves in a way that allows us to be competitive globally over time to build our economics,” said Ujjwal Deep Dahal, Druk’s CEO.

Based in Singapore, Bitdeer is one of the largest crypto miners in terms of computing power. The firm began trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange last month. The company plans to build a 100-megawatt Bitcoin mining facility in Bhutan, with construction scheduled to begin in Q2 2023 and wrap up by September, according to a regulatory filing.

Druk and Bitdeer intend to start reaching out to institutional investors at the end of this month, and both companies will also invest in the fund.

Dahal said Druk began mining crypto on behalf of Bhutan when Bitcoin was trading around $5,000, well ahead of its record high of $68,789.63 set in 2021.

It is unclear how aggressively Bhutan has been mining over the past six years, and it is impossible to know how much BTC they sold and at what levels. But if chip imports are any indication, it goes way beyond the “sandbox” approach they started with.

The country has imported over $193 million in computer chips in recent years, including approximately $142 million in 2022 alone, representing 10% of Bhutan’s inbound trade and 15% of the government’s $930 million annual budget.

If these mining rigs utilized even a fraction of what their massive power generation capacity implies, Bhutan may have quietly gone around becoming a major player in the cryptosphere, with stakes and profits that would be the envy of all but the biggest Bitcoin whales.