The Kingdom Of Bhutan Confirms It Has Been Mining Bitcoin For Several Years

The Himalayan kingdom's investment arm Druk Holding and Investments (DHI) revealed that it has been running a bitcoin mining operation in the country.

The Kingdom Of Bhutan Confirms It Has Been Mining Bitcoin For Several Years
  • "The DHI led by its CEO Ujjwal Deep Dahal finally came out of the digital assets closet, and said that the company as one of its many diversified portfolios is also engaged in mining digital assets within Bhutan."
  • "DHI is not buying and selling digital currency, but is mining mainly Bitcoin at a relatively low cost using green energy."
  • "DHI entered the mining space a few years ago as one of the early entrants when the price of Bitcoin was around USD 5,000."
  • It was also clarified that "DHI did not lose money in the borrowing of the digital assets if one compared it to the cost of digital asset mining in Bhutan", and "even if there were a spate of international bankruptcies among companies lending or trading in digital assets, DHI had not deposited the mined digital assets anywhere risky to lose them."
  • "Bhutan is perfectly set up to mine digital assets. For the country’s size, it has vast amounts of green energy generated through run-of-the river hydro projects and more importantly it is cheap."
  • "DHI also clarified that the priority of power supply is for domestic consumption, local industries and private sector and in fact mining gets the last priority. In the winter months when hydropower production is low then the mining operation either shuts down its machines or even imports power if it is affordable in order to not disrupt the domestic consumers and industries."
  • "Bhutan’s Ministry of Finance did not respond to a list of questions from Forbes about the scope of the enterprise."
  • "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," while $51 million worth of chips imported in 2021, and just $1.1 million of these chips imported in 2020, per Forbes.

The Bhutanese Article / Archive
Forbes Article / Archive