This year, Bhutan’s state investment arm quietly moved 512.84 BTC. Those bitcoins were worth $59.47 million at the time. BTC was transferred in six separate transactions to Binance. The largest chunk was over 208 BTC, worth roughly $23 million. The timing wasn’t random. Bitcoin had just climbed, which makes this look like a textbook case of taking profit at the top rather than liquidating a long-term position.
Just three days later, on August 8, another $60 million in Bitcoin moved to a Cobo Hot Wallet. It will shift some holdings into an institutional-grade custodial wallet. The change makes on-chain tracking more complicated and suggests a step toward more sophisticated asset management.
Bhutan’s Carbon-Free Bitcoin Reserves
Even with these transfers, Bhutan’s sovereign investment arm, Druk Holdings and Investments, is still holding a large reserve of 10,769 BTC. This is at the current prices of roughly $116,500 per coin is around $1.26 billion. It’s not the first time this year the country has made large moves. In mid-July, 650 BTC, worth about $74 million, was sent directly to Binance. Reports on Bhutan’s crypto activity often note that the country sends small “test” deposits to exchanges before making larger transfers. These small deposits appear to come just before bigger moves. However, there has never been an official statement confirming that they are linked to planned sales.
The foundation of these reserves is Bhutan’s crypto mining. Since 2019, Bhutan’s government has mined over 13,000 BTC using mostly extra power from its hydroelectric plants. This makes the mining completely carbon-free and uses one of the country’s biggest strengths. Over time, that mining strategy has built up a sizable reserve without the environmental impact that usually comes with Bitcoin production.
Bhutan’s Evolving Crypto Strategy
The activity hasn’t been limited to mining and reserve holding. Bhutan has also launched a national crypto-enabled payment system for tourism in partnership with Binance Pay and DK Bank. Visitors can pay for services in Bitcoin and stablecoins. It will help add a practical use case that keeps Bhutan crypto exchange activity tied to the real economy. It also quietly positions Bhutan as one of the few nations running both large-scale mining and direct consumer-level crypto adoption projects.
The decision to move funds into Cobo’s custody could be more than a security measure. It might suggest a move toward a more active reserve strategy. This could mean balancing long-term holdings from Bhutan’s crypto mining with timely trading or diversification. Market conditions, Bitcoin’s price swings, and even changing energy demands could be factors in this approach. For now, Bhutan still has over a billion dollars in Bitcoin, a clean-energy mining backbone, and growing infrastructure for payments. The way these pieces come together in the next few months will be telling.
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