Bhutan’s $1 Billion Bitcoin Bet: Funding Gelephu Mindfulness City with Crypto

A Himalayan kingdom just made a trillion-satoshi statement about the future of sovereign finance.

The Sovereign Treasury Play

Forget central bank digital currencies—Bhutan is going straight to the source. The nation is reportedly allocating a staggering $1 billion worth of Bitcoin from its reserves to bankroll the construction of Gelephu Mindfulness City. This isn't a speculative trade; it's a direct deployment of crypto assets into long-term national infrastructure. The move effectively bypasses traditional development financing, turning mined digital scarcity into physical roads, buildings, and economic zones.

From Hash Rate to Hard Hats

The mechanics are brutally simple. Sovereign-held Bitcoin, accumulated over years, gets liquidated or used as collateral to fund concrete and steel. It's a bold experiment in asset-backed nation-building. While Wall Street funds debate ETF flows, an entire country is using the original crypto as a strategic treasury reserve asset—and actually spending it. One can almost hear the collective gasp from fund managers who still think 'HODL' is an investment strategy.

Bhutan isn't just building a city; it's blueprinting a new fiscal paradigm where national balance sheets run on a different kind of math. Whether it's visionary or reckless depends on the price next halving—and whether the concrete sets before the next market cycle turns.

Bhutan pledges $1 billion to GMC during National Day celebrations

The commitment, disclosed during the King’s National Day Address, hails from a multi-year effort to channel national digital assets into the monarch’s development priorities in GMC. The pledge amounts to roughly $1 billion in value taken from Bhutan’s sovereign bitcoin holdings, depending on market prices.

The Royal Government of Bhutan said the allocation will be implemented gradually, with decisions on deployment methods to be announced in the coming months. Bhutan’s officials mentioned the approach will be executed through responsible stewardship and capital preservation, not short-term monetization.

Options under consideration include using Bitcoin holdings as collateral, deploying risk-managed treasury and yield strategies, or keeping the holdings long-term to protect asset value. Any use of Bitcoin, the government added, will be governed by strict oversight, transparency, and prudence. 

During his address, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck said the allocation was a shared national investment and not just GMC-oriented. 

As your King, I must ensure that every Bhutanese is a custodian, stakeholder, and beneficiary of GMC. Think of GMC as a company and landowners as its shareholders. Since most land is state-owned, Bhutanese from all Dzongkhags will share in its success. To support this policy, I am announcing today the allocation of up to 10,000 BTC, valued at approximately USD 1 billion. This commitment is for our people, our youth, and our nation.

King Wangchuck.

Bhutan’s ability to make such a pledge stems from years of state-backed Bitcoin mining powered by renewable energy. Per on-chain data revealed by Arkham Intelligence, the kingdom holds 5.9K Bitcoins, worth about $519 million at current market pricing.

This positions the monarchical government as the fifth-largest government holder of Bitcoin, behind the United States, China, the United Kingdom and Ukraine. Bhutan’s reserves were accumulated through government-funded mining operations beginning 2019, and are overseen by Druk Holding & Investments, the country’s sovereign investment arm. 

The largest facility occupies land originally earmarked for Bhutan’s failed “Education City” project, a $1 billion initiative intended to establish an international center “for education and knowledge” in the kingdom.

Although the project did not proceed, existing power lines, roads, and infrastructure were later repurposed to support industrial-scale Bitcoin mining.

Bhutan signs strategic MoU partnership with Cumberland DRW 

As reported by Cryptopolitan on Monday, Bhutan signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Cumberland DRW to support Bitcoin reserve management within GMC. The agreement outlines a multi-year collaboration featuring Bitcoin treasury management, stablecoins, mining operations, and artificial intelligence computing infrastructure, all led locally by Green Digital Ltd.

In a statement posted on X, Bhutan confirmed the collaboration with the crypto market maker, saying it was in line with the King’s vision for the city for finance and energy innovation.

In other news, state-owned Druk Green Power Corporation Limited is currently running a 120-megawatt solar tender for the Wobthang solar project in central Bhutan. The selected developer will handle the design, supply, installation, testing, and commissioning of the facility. 

Tender documents for the project show the procurement process follows the Asian Development Bank’s single-stage, two-envelope competitive bidding procedure, with applications due by January 26 next year.

The Wobthang project is under Bhutan’s Solar Farm Expansion Project, a plan to install at least 310 megawatts of new utility-scale solar capacity. The kingdom has applied for financing from the Asian Development Bank to support the expansion. 

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, Bhutan deployed 3 megawatts of solar capacity by the end of 2024, up from 1 megawatt a year earlier. 

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