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Druk Holding and Investments (DHI), the commercial sovereign wealth arm of the Royal Government of Bhutan, transferred 319.7 BTC worth approximately $22.67 million on April 9, 2026, according to on-chain tracking by analytics account Onchain Lens. The funds moved into two separate wallets: one newly created address, speculated to be exchange-linked, and one older wallet previously used to route BTC sales through Galaxy Digital and OKX. The transfer implies a Bitcoin spot price near $70,900 at time of transfer.

The move pushes Bhutan's estimated Bitcoin holdings well below 5,000 BTC. Earlier March 2026 data put the figure between 4,453 and 4,973 BTC; applying the widely cited 70% drawdown from the country's peak of roughly 13,000 BTC in late 2024 implies a remaining balance closer to 3,900 BTC, a figure derived from that drawdown claim rather than independently verified, and one that reflects continued rapid liquidation since the earlier estimates were recorded.

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A Sell-Off That Has Been Building for Months

DHI began quietly liquidating its Bitcoin stack in late 2024, but the pace accelerated sharply in early 2026. A notable milestone came in July 2025, when Bhutan sold 512.84 BTC over four days, netting $59.47 million as Bitcoin reached $123,000, its then-all-time high. That episode demonstrated that DHI was actively selling into price strength, not merely offloading during a downturn.

Prior to the April 9 transfer, Bhutan had already moved more than $150 million worth of BTC out this year alone, making it one of the most active sovereign Bitcoin sellers globally. Monthly outflows ran between $5 million and $15 million in January and February, then climbed to weekly tranches of $35 million to $45 million through March. According to CoinDesk's on-chain analysis from March 10, 2026, Singapore-based OTC trading firm QCP Capital was one structured counterparty, receiving transfers totalling around $16.6 million. Galaxy Digital and OKX appear repeatedly in the routing history as additional exit points.

DHI built its Bitcoin reserve through state-backed hydroelectric mining, beginning operations around 2019 to 2021. DHI had invested close to $500 million in infrastructure conversion between 2021 and 2023, a sunk cost that underlies the near-zero marginal cost economics of its mining operation. Bhutan's surplus hydropower, generated primarily for export to India, provided that near-zero marginal cost electricity. In 2023, the government partnered with Nasdaq-listed Bitdeer to scale operations toward 600 megawatts of hashrate capacity, with estimated weekly output reaching 55 to 75 BTC at peak. As CoinDesk reported in March 2026, because the cost basis on mined coins is effectively zero, every transfer represents profit.

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The Gelephu Pledge Now Looks Unreachable

The central justification for selling has been the Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC), a flagship special economic zone and special administrative region Bhutan is developing in its southern lowlands.

In his National Day Address in December 2025, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck described the project as a generational investment aimed at creating quality jobs and opportunities for Bhutan's youth, committing up to 10,000 BTC to fund GMC's infrastructure.

The planned development covers high-speed rail, renewable energy systems, the Bhutan NDI national digital identity program, finance, healthcare, and high-value tourism.

The arithmetic is now a problem. With current holdings estimated at fewer than 5,000 BTC and the sell-off still running, DHI cannot fulfil the original 10,000 BTC pledge without completely reversing course or relying on ongoing mining output to rebuild the stack. This gap has received limited scrutiny outside a handful of Western crypto outlets, despite being a central tension in Bhutan's Bitcoin strategy.

Blockchain analytics firm Nansen announced a local entity and Bhutan-based hiring in February 2026 specifically to support GMC's on-chain data infrastructure, suggesting continued private-sector interest in GMC's development infrastructure even as the funding mechanism strains.

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A Regional Outlier in South Asia

Bhutan's approach sits in sharp contrast to the rest of South Asia. India, the region's largest economy and the global leader in grassroots crypto adoption according to Chainalysis, imposes a 30% flat tax on crypto gains, prohibits loss offsetting, and bans Bitcoin as legal tender. Its central bank has resisted formal crypto integration and a comprehensive regulatory bill has stalled in parliament for years.

Pakistan moved in the opposite direction in May 2025, establishing the Pakistan Digital Assets Authority and allocating 2,000 megawatts of electricity for Bitcoin mining and AI data centres, though its model is framed around economic necessity rather than sovereign reserve building.

Nepal and Sri Lanka maintain highly restrictive stances. Sri Lanka's central bank has not authorised any crypto entities, a concrete illustration of the regulatory distance separating those countries from Bhutan's approach.

For smaller economies across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa that hold renewable energy surpluses, Bhutan's experiment carries a specific kind of relevance. At its peak, Bhutan held approximately 40% of its GDP in Bitcoin and ranked among the top sovereign Bitcoin holders globally, behind only the United States, the United Kingdom (which holds seized assets), and El Salvador. The DHI model, using mined Bitcoin as a debt-free infrastructure financing mechanism, sidesteps the borrowing that typically funds large development projects.

Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia lead globally in grassroots crypto adoption according to the Chainalysis 2026 index, yet no African government has attempted a comparable sovereign mining reserve at scale.

The routing of Bhutan's liquidations through Galaxy Digital and OKX also highlights a persistent dependency: even the most novel sovereign crypto strategies still rely on Western institutional and centralised exchange infrastructure to convert holdings into usable capital.

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What Comes Next

DHI did not respond to requests for comment on its liquidation activity, according to CoinDesk.

If the current pace continues and mining output does not substantially offset sales, Bhutan's Bitcoin stack could be depleted significantly faster than the GMC pledge requires.

The Gelephu project is still moving forward on other fronts, but the gap between the original 10,000 BTC pledge and current holdings leaves the BTC-backed funding mechanism facing a significant shortfall with no publicly announced plan to close it. The pledge gap has itself received limited public scrutiny, and Bhutan's experience is already testing the limits of how sovereign entities manage Bitcoin treasury drawdowns, a domain where established tools and precedents remain scarce. How DHI navigates that challenge will shape whether other governments view mining-to-treasury models as viable long-term strategies for funding national infrastructure.