Bhutan sells 70% of its Bitcoin reserves within 18 months; sovereign mining experiment may have been terminated

Mars Finance News, April 11 — According to Arkham on-chain data, the Kingdom of Bhutan is continuously liquidating its Bitcoin holdings.
As of October 2024, Bhutan’s sovereign wealth fund, Druk Holding and Investments, held about 13,000 Bitcoins, now only 3,954 Bitcoins remain, with a market value of approximately $280.6 million, a total reduction of about 70% over 18 months, transferring out Bitcoin worth $215.7 million just this year.
Meanwhile, Bhutan’s Bitcoin mining operations seem to have also come to a halt — on-chain data shows that its last mining income record exceeding $100k was over a year ago, and Druk Holdings has not disclosed any related information publicly.
Economic pressure is the main reason. Bhutan relies on hydropower for Bitcoin mining; it can remain profitable when computational difficulty is low and the Bitcoin price exceeds $90k, but currently, Bitcoin hovers around $71k, network difficulty has hit an all-time high, and after the halving, block rewards have dropped to 3.125 coins, significantly compressing the profit margins for small-scale sovereign mining.
Analysis suggests that selling hydropower directly to India is more cost-effective than continuing mining.
Bhutan’s reduction is in stark contrast to the global mainstream institutions’ direction — Strategy invested $330 million last weekend to buy 4,871 Bitcoins, and the US spot ETF saw a net inflow of about 50k Bitcoins in March alone.
Bhutan’s remaining holdings are even less than Strategy’s typical weekly purchase volume.