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Surprisingly, El Salvador ranks near the bottom in the list of governments holding the most Bitcoin. As of the latest data, Bhutan has emerged as a surprising leader in state-held Bitcoin reserves, with a value of $782.46 million, far surpassing El Salvador’s $351.75 million reserve.
Bhutan’s Bitcoin Holdings Outpace El Salvador
Despite its small population of just 782,000 people, Bhutan holds more than twice the Bitcoin reserves of El Salvador, which has a population of over 6.3 million. This places Bhutan third in the global ranking of state-held Bitcoin assets, behind the United States ($12.16 billion) and the United Kingdom ($3.67 billion).
Bhutan’s significant Bitcoin reserves can be traced back to April 2019, when BTC was valued at around $5,000. Bhutan’s sovereign investment arm, Druk Holding & Investments, confirmed that the country began mining Bitcoin at that time. Since then, Bhutan has leveraged its vast hydroelectric resources to power large-scale mining operations.
Clean Energy Powers Bhutan’s Bitcoin Mining
Bhutan’s rivers, fed by Himalayan glaciers, provide an impressive 23,760 MW of technically feasible hydroelectric capacity. Hydropower makes up 30% of Bhutan’s GDP, and by 2003, 99.5% of the country’s electricity was sourced from hydroelectricity. This clean energy infrastructure allows Bhutan to expand its Bitcoin mining activities while maintaining its environmental commitments.
To put Bhutan’s hydroelectric potential in perspective, the country’s total capacity could power over 17 million American homes or more than double the energy needs of a city like New York.
