This Tiny Country Has A Secret Bitcoin Mine

High in the South Asian Himalayan mountains, there exists a tiny country between China and India.

The country controls only 14,824 square miles and boasts a population of only 727,145 – less than any US state besides Vermont and Wyoming. Landlocked, the country is automatically at a huge disadvantage economically.

But, this tiny kingdom of Bhutan is blessed with one natural resource in abundance: hydroelectricity. Bhutan has an absolutely massive amount of hydroelectric power due to ancient glacier rivers – so much so that hydroelectricity accounts for nearly 30% of the country’s GDP and powers the home of every single resident.

However, Bhutan is not content with merely selling hydroelectricity to their Chinese and Indian neighbors. They have bigger goals with their greatest gift, and for the past two years, they’ve made this secret dream a reality.

They are using these hydro reserves to power their own bitcoin mine.

A Long Time Coming

Despite its small stature, Bhutan frequently punches above its weight when it comes to thinking outside the box. The country is famous for its use of innovative economic concepts like Gross National Happiness, high-end tourism (hitting visitors with expensive visa fees), and the purchasing of cryptocurrency.

But, when Covid hit in 2020, Bhutan closed its borders, shuttering that lucrative tourism industry. They had to think of another way to generate revenue, so they turned to their great hydro reserves with a crazy idea to power their own bitcoin mines, when BTC was trading at ~$5,000.

In many ways, it was a natural fit. China’s ban on crypto mining left many miners out in the cold, searching for another place with cheap energy to power their rigs. Bhutan has immense hydroelectric power available for cheap, and the government is already familiar with and friendly to crypto.

Opening a bitcoin mining rig there made too much sense not to happen.

Unanswered Questions

Unfortunately, the world’s second sovereign bitcoin mine (after El Salvador) is not without questions and doubts.

Nobody knows where the mine is, how powerful it is, if it’s turned a profit, or why Bhutan kept it a secret. Basically, nobody knows what Bhutan’s up to, or why.

The only reason we know anything at all is because the country’s official investment arm, Druk Holdings Investments (DHI)’s, name popped up in BlockFi and Celsius bankruptcy documents.

The revelation obviously leads one to ask: what other countries are mining or accumulating BTC? We know that Venezuela and Russia have also admitted to buying BTC for their treasuries – are there others?

We are living in a time of money-shifting world order…

Where the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) have now surpassed the G7 nations in GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP) for the first time in history…

Where some oil sales are now being settled in the Chinese Yuan…

While the US is over $31 Trillion in debt and squabbling about a debt ceiling.

If you were a small country being pulled between world powers, what would you do?