Bhutan has announced plans to commit 10,000 Bitcoin from its reserves towards the development of the Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC), a special administrative region.
The GMC is Bhutan’s flagship economic initiative, where it plans to harness innovation, sustainability, and financial connectivity to foster national growth and create long-term prosperity for the country’s youth and broader population of roughly 800,000 people, in line with His Majesty King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck’s vision of applying modern digital technologies with care and responsibility.
Located in the southern town of Gelephu near the Indian border, the GMC was officially launched in 2024 to reverse the outflow of talent by generating high-value employment opportunities, and also to support Bhutan’s plans to deepen its involvement in Bitcoin mining and broader digital asset infrastructure.
According to a December 17 announcement, Bhutan will use up to 10,000 Bitcoin from its national reserves, which is estimated to be valued at roughly $875 million based on current prices.
Officials said the country is considering a mix of collateralization, risk-managed yield strategies, and long-term holding plans that prioritize the preservation and compounding potential of its digital asset treasury.
“Any use of Bitcoin will be guided by strong governance and prudence, with an emphasis on capital preservation, appropriate oversight, and transparency,” an excerpt from the announcement stated.
King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck wants every Bhutanese citizen to benefit from the GMC project and is therefore developing a “new land policy” to ensure broad-based prosperity through shared ownership of the region’s future.
“Think of GMC as a company and landowners as its shareholders. Since most land is state-owned, Bhutanese from all Dzongkhags will share in its success,” he said.
Bhutan integrates crypto across GMC
Bhutan has already begun integrating Bitcoin and other digital assets into GMC’s strategic reserves and has introduced various crypto-based services to support digital asset adoption.
For instance, Bhutan launched TER, a sovereign digital token on the Solana blockchain, fully backed by physical gold reserves, earlier this month.
The TER token is designed to combine the reliability of gold with the advantages of blockchain-based finance, with DK Bank serving as the exclusive distributor and Matrixdock providing the infrastructure for tokenization and collateral verification.
Earlier, the country migrated its entire national digital identity platform to the Ethereum blockchain, making it the world’s first nation to anchor a population-wide identity system on a public network.
All of these initiatives are expected to form the foundation of Bhutan’s digital economy as the country steadily builds out the GMC over the coming years.
Earlier this year, Bhutan also became the first country to enable nationwide crypto payments for tourism services.
To achieve this, the government partnered with Binance Pay and DK Bank to allow international travelers with Binance accounts to pay for everything from hotels and visas to local goods and services using crypto.
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