Bhutan deposited as much as 929 BTC on the Binance exchange. So is the country starting to sell off its cryptocurrencies?
Bhutan transfers BTC to Binance
Arkham Intelligence data shows that someone transferred bitcoins worth approximately USD 66.16 million to Binance from wallets associated with the government of Bhutan. He did this on October 29 with two transactions.
Currently, Bhutan has “only” 12,456 BTC, or almost USD 891 million. However, it is not known whether he started the process of liquidating cryptocurrencies: after all, what was the purpose of sending bitcoins to the Binance exchange?
However, this is not the first time Bhutan has sent bitcoins to a cryptocurrency exchange. In July, he transferred 381 BTC to his Kraken wallet. In addition, just over a week ago, 228.8 ETH, worth approximately USD 600,000, was transferred from a wallet associated with the country’s government to an address belonging to Binance. Today, the authorities only have USD 1.72 million in ETH.
Where does Bhutan get BTC?
Bhutan is a special country: the cryptocurrencies it has were not obtained by confiscating them from criminals, but mined them themselves. The government has been mining the cryptocurrency since 2017, when 1 BTC was worth about $5,000. It uses water energy in the process. In May 2023, it also established cooperation with Bitdeer, a company listed on Nasdaq. All this in order to develop a 100% emission-free BTC mining method in the country.
As a result of these efforts, Bhutan is now the fifth largest BTC holder country in terms of resources, behind only the United States, China, the United Kingdom and Ukraine. The digital assets are formally held by the state’s investment arm, Druk Holding & Investments.
But why is the country mining BTC? It’s not just about finding an alternative to gold. Mining is a new source of income for this country, especially needed after a sharp decline in tourism revenues was recorded (mainly caused by the COVID-19 pandemic). According to the website The Bhutanese funds generated from bitcoin mining helped finance a 50 percent increase in government officials’ salaries.
You can buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in a simple and safe way on the zondacrypto exchange.
