Bhutan says it “doesn’t recall” selling bitcoin, pushing back on a widely tracked $1 billion BTC drawdown
Bhutan says it “doesn’t recall” selling bitcoin. Arkham Intelligence data, though, shows a steep fall in wallets it links to Druk Holding and Investments. That leaves crypto investors with the uncomfortable bit: did Bhutan sell? And if it did, was a state linked miner quietly adding supply while BTC traded near $79,000? My take: the denial matters, but the wallet trail still matters more.
The dispute starts with wallets Arkham has tracked for years as DHI wallets. DHI is Bhutan’s sovereign wealth fund. Arkham says those wallets held about 13,000 BTC in October 2024 and only about 3,100 BTC on Friday, May 15, 2026. That was worth $252 million on Friday evening India time. Arkham estimates Bhutan may have sold $1 billion in bitcoin since July 2025, including about $207 million moved this year to exchanges and trading firms. Big gap. Bigger question.
That is not a rounding error, especially for Bhutan. The country is the second nation after El Salvador to officially mine and hold bitcoin. Arkham says Bhutan has mined bitcoin since at least 2019. It also says the government funded at least four known mining sites, using Bhutan’s hydropower instead of buying coins on the open market. Why does this matter? Because mined BTC carries a cleaner political story than purchased BTC: local energy in, sovereign reserve out.
DHI is pushing back, but not with much detail. “I don’t recall the last time we sold any BTC,” DHI CEO Ujjwal Deep Dahal told CoinDesk by email. When CoinDesk asked about the wallet movements Arkham tracked, a separate reply from the division said only that “our statement stands and nothing to add beyond it.” DHI did not explain the transfers. It did not reject Arkham’s wallet labels. It also did not say how much bitcoin Bhutan holds now. I’ll be honest: that is a very narrow denial.
This is where traders should slow down. Onchain transfers are not sales receipts. Most quick takes treat exchange inflows as proof of selling. That’s only half right. Arkham’s own analyst said that once bitcoin reaches a centralized exchange, there is “generally no definitive sign” it has been sold, because order books sit off chain. Fair enough. But the same analyst said exchange deposits usually point to selling. Some of the outflows went to wallets previously used with Galaxy Digital and OKX, plus exchanges and trading firms more often linked to sales than plain wallet housekeeping.
So the adoption story gets messier. A sovereign miner holding BTC fits the long term treasury argument. A sovereign miner sending BTC toward exchanges does not fit as neatly. In December, Bhutan announced a Bitcoin Development Pledge of up to 10,000 BTC for Gelephu Mindfulness City, a new economic zone in southern Bhutan. That pledge was worth about $860 million at the time. Now bitcoin is near $79,000, and Arkham-linked wallets appear to hold roughly 3,300 BTC. If those wallets still show Bhutan’s final ownership, the country no longer has 10,000 BTC to pledge. Yes, this complicates the bullish sovereign-reserve script. It should.
The other issue is market flow. BTC can absorb large state sized moves, but visible supply still matters, especially when it clusters near exchanges and OTC desks. Arkham says the outflows picked up in 2026. It also estimates Bhutan will have sold all remaining bitcoin by October if the current pace continues. Is that overkill to track? For a holder that once sat near 13,000 BTC, no. Traders rarely wait for perfect proof of a final sale. They price the risk once a known holder starts looking like a seller.
There are cleaner explanations, and they should not be waved away. Bhutan may be moving bitcoin without treating those movements as “selling.” That could mean custody transfers or collateral. It could mean lending deals. It could also mean OTC structures that are not simple spot sales. A source close to one of the trading firms that received bitcoin from wallets Arkham links to Bhutan also said no sales have taken place recently. We have seen this pattern before in wallet analysis: the transfer is real, the interpretation is the slippery part.
The mining picture makes the whole thing harder to read. CoinDesk reported in March that Bhutan may have stopped mining entirely, with no major inflows to its known wallets in more than a year. Dahal pushed back indirectly. He said Bhutan had been “fortunate this year” because early and steady rainfall kept hydropower plants running well and mining operations active. He also said all bitcoin mined in Bhutan uses green energy and that the country keeps upgrading to newer rigs. Counter to the usual advice, the absence of fresh inflows may not settle anything here; it may just mean the tracked wallet map is incomplete.
For investors, the contradiction is the story. If Bhutan still holds something close to the old 13,000 BTC figure, Arkham’s tracked wallets are missing a large piece. If the real number is closer to 3,100 BTC or 3,300 BTC, Bhutan’s state level bitcoin reserve looks very different than it did in October 2024. The country still has about $754 million in unrealized profit on what remains. But markets care about direction, not just profit. That part gets missed.
What this means
The sovereign BTC story is maturing, and it is not as tidy as the pitch deck version. Bhutan showed that a country can mine bitcoin with local energy and hold it as a state asset, much as El Salvador did through a different political route. But Arkham’s tracked drop from about 13,000 BTC in October 2024 to about 3,100 BTC on Friday, May 15, 2026, raises the harder question. Are sovereign bitcoin treasuries permanent reserves? Development funds? Liquidity when BTC gets expensive? My answer: probably all three, depending on the month.
Watch BTC first. Bhutan is the subplot. The numbers that matter are Arkham’s tracked balance of roughly 3,100 BTC to 3,300 BTC, the December pledge of 10,000 BTC for Gelephu Mindfulness City, and Arkham’s October depletion estimate if the pace holds. Traders should also watch new transfers from DHI-linked wallets to Galaxy Digital-linked wallets, OKX-linked wallets, exchanges, or OTC firms. Another outflow near $207 million would matter more for market structure than another careful denial.