Bhutan has quietly been mining bitcoin since 2019, becoming the second country after El Salvador known to have a state-run mine, and is planning a 100 MW mine
The Himalayan kingdom confirmed it has been running a bitcoin mining operation as mystery surrounds the scale of its earlier cryptocurrency investments.
Forbes
Context & Ripple Effects
Bhutan’s disclosure put it alongside El Salvador as an identified state participant in bitcoin mining, rather than merely a government holding the asset. El Salvador’s later reporting on geothermal mining illustrates the same sovereign strategy of pairing a domestic energy source with a bitcoin reserve geothermal-powered mining results.
Bhutan moves from an undisclosed mining participant to a publicly identified state operator, with a 100 MW facility signaling a substantially larger planned commitment to mining capacity.
The plan ties government decision-making more directly to electricity allocation, mining hardware procurement, and the value of bitcoin accumulated through the operation.
Second-order effects
El Salvador becomes the clearest sovereign comparator, sharpening scrutiny of whether state-backed mining can turn local energy advantages into durable bitcoin reserves.
A larger Bhutanese operation increases the importance of chip supply and facility build-out; the later identification of multiple sites suggests that the expansion was not limited to a single proposed mine the reported multi-facility footprint.
Third-order effects
If governments continue to mine rather than only buy bitcoin, sovereign crypto exposure could increasingly be shaped by control of energy and compute infrastructure, not just treasury purchases.
Bhutan’s later use of reserves for a development initiative suggests a broader model in which mined digital assets are treated as strategic public capital—though its viability remains dependent on operating costs and bitcoin-market outcomes.
The trend: This is one data point in the shift from sovereign bitcoin adoption as a policy signal toward state-controlled mining infrastructure and reserve management.
After we reached out to Bhutan's government earlier this week for comment, they confirmed to a local newspaper yesterday that they had begun mining “a few years ago” when bitcoin was valued at $5,000 https://thebhutanese.bt/...
The tiny kingdom of Bhutan has been quietly mining bitcoin for the past few years, making it one of the only nations to run a state-owned mine. @_IainMartin and I learned more about Bhutan's crypto investments after our report on its sovereign holdings. https://www.forbes.com/...
At their Q4 '21 peak, ASICS were $106.17/Th So if they bought at the worst time, since an S19JPro is 110Th/3.25kW, they would have purchased - 53 MW - 1.78 EH of ASICS
Last year, around $142 million worth of computer chips were imported into Bhutan, accounting for around a tenth of the kingdom's total $1.4 billion of inbound trade, or around 15% of the government's $930 million annual budget. https://www.mof.gov.bt/... https://twitter.com/...
Bhutan has confirmed it has quietly been running a bitcoin mining operation after @SarahNEmerson and I began digging into its secret investments in cryptocurrency earlier this month. Here's what we have learned 🧵 https://www.forbes.com/...
Based on today's Forbes article, Bhutan's Hydro-based Bitcoin mining is * at least 53 MW/ 1.78 EH (if they bought at the peak) * Most likely to be 100 MW/ 3.37 EH ( which would be a little under 1% of global hashrate) Pretty significant. Calculations enclosed https://twitter.com/…
But here's something that hasn't been reported yet: Buried in an April SEC filing from Chinese billionaire-owned Bitdeer are its plans to build a 100M mine in Bhutan. Details are scarce, but very interested to know more about this... https://www.sec.gov/...
The exact scale of Bhutan's crypto mining operation still hasn't been disclosed but import records show something very unusual - in a normal year the country's inbound trade is dominated by gasoline, steel, and rice. Now, “processing units” (chips) are its most valuable import
Bhutan bought a total of 141M + 51M in chips, 2.2M of which was likely the baseline of non-ASICS chips. So that's 189.8M on new ASICS. As they were purchased in '21 and '22, we can assume they were most likely S19JPro equivalents. source: https://www.forbes.com/...
The Forbes article also said a source indicated they intended to build 100MW. For them to achieve this, they would have needed to buy @ $56/Th. Looking at the ASICS price curve, they could easily have locked in this average buy-price - especially for a big order.