Donald Trump may have called for a strategic bitcoin reserve — but while the US president grabs headlines, other sovereigns are quietly amassing their own kitties. Bhutan, a tiny kingdom so esoteric it measures happiness the way more humdrum counties measure economic output, holds the fifth biggest national bitcoin stash.
Countries come by their tokens in different ways. Crime kick-started Washington’s booty. US federal law enforcement seized bitcoin when taking down the Silk Road online marketplace — assets in this case being the bitcoin buyers used to purchase drugs, arms and other contraband on the dark web. Forfeits from crime also explain the UK’s 61,000-odd bitcoin, as of the end of December.
Bhutan’s haul derives from a more wholesome source. The Himalayan kingdom mines its own coins, harnessing rivers to power the computers. There is a nice circularity to this. Exporting hydropower would be expensive and inevitably require new infrastructure, not all of which would necessarily be aesthetically pleasing. So instead Bhutan monetises the energy — turning gigawatts into money — by mining bitcoin at home. That’s helpful for a country with few wealth-generating levers at its disposal; it imports nearly everything and manufacturing is a non-starter.