How Did Bhutan Become World's 4th Largest Bitcoin Holder? Details On Country's $780 Worth Crypto Assets

The tiny country Bhutan in the Indian subcontinent has surprisingly emerged as one of the largest bitcoin-holding countries in the world. As per a report by the cryptocurrency analysing company Arkham Intelligence, the Government of Bhutan owns $780.49 million worth of Bitcoins. This has put Bhutan on the world's Bitcoin map, after only US, China and the UK, the three top countries, respectively, in terms of Bitcoin holdings. Bhutan's journey in aggregating Bitcoin has been led by the state's investment arm - Druk Holdings. A Buddhist monarchy, the country's Bitcoin efforts have been spearheaded by the government in a way that is different from other governments with high Bitcoin holdings. Concerted efforts to aggregate bitcoins rapidly started in 2023, and have 'dramatically risen' since. Today, Bhutan owns as many as 13,011 BTC. Arkham Intelligence brought out the data on Bhutan's bitcoin holding for the first time in public. "Bhutan is the 4th largest government with Bitcoin holdings on our platform, with over $750M in BTC," Arkham stated on X. "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," it added. As opposed to enforcement asset seizure, which has been the primary means to acquire the virtual currency for most governments, Bhutan's route focuses more on creation. The nation has constructed mining facilities for Bitcoin in several places with one planned on the land where the erstwhile Education City project was to come up. "We were able to corroborate the timeline of on-chain mining activity with time-lapse satellite imagery of facility construction," the company added.According to a report published on the website of Nasdaq, Bhutan has built mining sites using hydropower and resources. It is being dubbed as an example of "eco-friendly" mining.