Bhutan has resumed sending Bitcoin from government-linked wallets to market venues, with blockchain intelligence platform Arkham flagging $22.4 million in outflows over the past week. The transfers add to a pattern Arkham says it has observed for months: periodic sales from a sovereign stash built through years of state-backed mining. Bhutan’s Bitcoin Sales Hit The Market Again Arkham said one of the larger movements in the recent batch appears to have been routed straight to trading infrastructure. “Bhutan has transferred $22.4M of Bitcoin out of their wallets in the past week to sell,” Arkham wrote on X. “Their transfer 5 days ago was sent directly to the labeled addresses of market maker QCP Capital.” The firm framed the activity as episodic rather than a one-off liquidation. “From our observations, Bhutan periodically sells BTC in clips of around $50M, with a particularly heavy period of selling around mid-late September 2025 ,” Arkham said, suggesting a cadence of sales that can show up as discrete chunks of on-chain flow rather than a steady drip. Bhutan’s Bitcoin positioning is unusual in that Arkham ties it to multi-year mining operations, not confiscations or open-market accumulation. “Bhutan has been mining Bitcoin since 2019, and has produced over $765M in BTC profit,” Arkham wrote, while estimating “Bhutan’s total energy cost of mining to be ~$120M.” Arkham added a caveat that the true cost basis could be lower: “In practice, this is likely lower, since Bhutan used hydroelectric power as a major source of electricity.” The timing of mining activity also appears to track protocol economics. Arkham said Bhutan mined most of its Bitcoin before the April 2024 halving and then scaled back as production costs rose. “They mined most of their BTC before the halving in 2024, and tapered heavily after that,” Arkham wrote. “This is because the cost to mine a single Bitcoin roughly doubled, which made mining less efficient.” Arkham described 2023 as the high-water mark for Bhutan’s mining output. “Bhutan’s heaviest mining year was 2023, when they produced around 8,200 BTC,” the firm said, adding that “at the time of their peak BTC holdings, they held over 13,000 BTC.” Arkham’s estimated annual mining totals were approximately 2,500 BTC in 2021, 1,800 BTC in 2022, 8,200 BTC in 2023, and 3,000 BTC in 2024. At press time, BTC traded at $71,174.
