The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The value of Bitcoin saw a high of USD 126,000 in early October 2025 but since then has seen a steady decline in value briefly going to a low of below USD 61,000 on Thursday before making a strong recovery to USD 71,309 as of late Friday evening.
The first question here is the impact on Bhutan’s mining of Bitcoins. Here a source said that Bhutan’s cost of mining each Bitcoin is around USD 40,000 to USD 60,000 with it being lower when the difficulty rate is low and it being higher when the difficulty rate is high.
To put it simply the difficulty rate is high when there are a lot of miners which reduces the reward for mining.
The difficulty rate is coming down as less miners mine Bitcoin firstly due to the price drop which makes it less viable for miners in countries with high power rates or mining cost, and secondly due to the snow storm in USA which has the world’s highest mining rate.
The source said that even with the price drop, mining for Bhutan is still profitable and will be more so in the summer months when Bhutan has access to one of the world’s cheapest power rates.
Even if the price ever reaches breakeven or even a slight loss the strategy will still be to mine as the long term price of the crypto currency is expected to go up.
Another source in Bhutan said that when the price of Bitcoin touched an all time high of USD 126,000 the discussion by a Bitdeer official was that the difficulty rate or cost was around USD 70,000 to 80,000. This difficulty rate would have significantly reduced with the prices.
The Bitcoin mines under DHI are operating at capacity using imported power during the day and at night after the peak hours post 9 pm it also uses available local power. Though the exact size of DHI’s mines is not known it is estimated to be slightly smaller than the 600 MW capacity of Bitdeer in Bhutan.
In the meantime, of the 500 MW Bitcoin mine or data center of Bitdeer in Gelephu, it is operating at 454 MW capacity using imported power despite the price drops. It would be even higher if not for some power substation issues which are being resolved.
There are two reasons Bitdeer is still mining despite high power prices of around Nu 5 and the drop in Bitcoin value. One is that its Gelephu machines are new and around 50% more efficient than its 100 MW Gedu machines and the second reason being that Bitdeer believes in the long term value of Bitcoin and wants to hold it as part of its strategic move and direction.
Bitdeer is currently replacing the machines in its Gedu plant which is older and thus less efficient and it is producing power from the more efficient new machines at around 10 to 20 MW.
Meanwhile, Arkham Intelligence recently said that Bhutan is only holding around 5,700 Bitcoins due to sales and transfers after a high of 13,295 Bitcoins in October 2025. This was widely reported in crypto based new sites and even others like Yahoo Finance.
However, an official in Bhutan said that the Arkham data is not correct as Bhutan has not sold such a large batch of Bitcoins but in fact as moved them from exposed wallets to different ones and even institutional ones to reduce risk and exposure.
The official said that while Bhutan’s Bitcoins may no longer be valued at above USD 1 billion (bn) due to the price drop it certainly is under USD 1 bn.
The official said that His Majesty had announced that 10,000 Bitcoins will be kept aside for Gelephu Mindfulness City and that is already there.
According to the official, Bhutan occasionally sells some Bitcoins for operation and maintenance costs but these are smaller in number.
The official said the Bitcoin movements are for asset management and not liquidation.
Even a crypto expert in Bhutan who works outside DHI does not believe the Arkham claims as he said Bhutan’s strategy is to hold Bitcoins.
Bitcoin prices have moved lower due to several reasons. The first is profit taking by investors as prices reached a high of USD 126,000 in October. The second reason is Bitcoin exchange-traded funds that boosted prices in 2024 and 2025 has seen funds being withdrawn. The third reason is that Bitcoin is corelated with riskier assets and during uncertain times its value falls along with the stock market. Another reason is margin calls as when prices hit lower automatic sales happen and also due to weaker institutional demand.
This is being seen as a crypto winter of sorts and part of similar trends in the past though many also predict that prices will eventually go higher in the long run as it also did after similar dips in the past.
