Bhutan moves a further $23M in Bitcoin as holdings drop by 70%

Bhutan has moved another 319 BTC, taking the total to over 9,000 BTC since late 2024, and trimming its sovereign stash by around 70%.

Bhutan moved more Bitcoin from its sovereign-linked wallet on Thursday, further reducing its once sizeable BTC stash and extending its months-long selling. 

Arkham data showed a wallet attributed to the Royal Government of Bhutan and its investment arm Druk Holding & Investment, transferred about 319 Bitcoin (BTC), worth roughly $22.68 million, bringing total outflows since late October 2024 to more than 9,000 BTC.

The transfer follows a series of recent wallet movements by the country flagged by Arkham. In March alone, the Bhutan-tagged wallet moved more than 1,667 BTC (roughly $120 million), taking Bhutan’s Bitcoin holdings from about 13,000 BTC in late 2024 to 3,654 BTC in April, according to Arkham Intelligence’s tracking dashboard.

While that constitutes a roughly 70% drop in the country’s BTC holdings, Bhutan is still the fifth-largest publicly tracked nation-state holder, behind the United States (328,000 BTC), the United Kingdom (61,000 BTC), El Salvador (7,600 BTC) and the United Arab Emirates (7,000 BTC).

Bhutan has not publicly commented on the recent disposals, and the activity is inferred from wallet labels and transaction patterns tied to the government and Druk Holding & Investment.

The kingdom built much of its position through state-backed mining that uses hydropower to support data centers, a strategy officials have framed as part of a “green Bitcoin economy” and a way to diversify export revenues beyond electricity sales.

Bhutan uses surplus, carbon-free hydropower to run energy-intensive supercomputers that mine Bitcoin, turning excess electricity into a liquid digital export and exploring whether large corporations could buy its “green” coins to meet environmental, social and governance targets.

Related: Bhutan to deploy Sei validator in Q1, eyes tokenization collab

In December 2025, Bhutan unveiled a national Bitcoin Development Pledge committing up to 10,000 BTC (roughly $1 billion at the time) to support the long-term development of its Gelephu Mindfulness City special administrative region. 

Authorities said the allocation would be managed through options such as using Bitcoin as collateral, low-risk yield-generating instruments or long-term holding as part of a broader strategy to anchor the new economic hub in digital assets and sustainable finance.

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Source: CoinTelegraph