Fast Facts
- Named for: the English Bhutan refers to “Böd” or Tibet, Sanskrit for “End of Tibet” as Bhoṭa-anta (भोट-अन्त). Bhutan calls itself Druk yul (literally, “country of the Thunder Dragon” which is a Buddhist sect but sounds cool).
- Long/Lat: 27.3 N/ 89.4 E 7500 West of CV, 14 hrs
- Population: 770,000 (11 CVs), smallest in Asia
- Size: 14,800 sq mi (1000 CVs)
- Avg temp in April: 63-80 F (17-26C), cool to dry heat, depending on altitude
- Median household income: $4,300, but most farm own food
- Ethnicity: Mostly Ngalop, Sharchop,and Lhotsamp; some originally from Tibet or Nepal, but many indigenous. Buddhism runs a strong current through culture.
- Main industries: Tourism, Cryptocurrency, Farming
Bhutan is a strip of land that launches into the Himalayas, east of Nepal, north of India and Bangladesh, and south of Tibet, a region of China. Bhutan is 98.8% mountain, the most mountainous country in the world. The average elevation is 10,761 ft, which makes Andorra look like a flatland, hilly Castro Valley look like it’s under water, and New Orleans like… well… Atlantis.
We might view the people as poor, but they are rural and faithfully Buddhist, farming in those hills as they have for centuries. Except for one thing that comes from those mountains: water. The glaciers in the Himalayas melt, water runs down hill, and that creates hydroelectric power. Bhutan has a large net negative carbon usage, power to sell.
Thus, this tiny country is the world’s fifth largest holder of Bitcoin (behind US, China, UK, and Ukraine). Massive energy surpluses allow it not only to sell energy to neighbors like Bangladesh and Pakistan, but also to mine bitcoin. Meaning new server-holding ASIC warehouses built in those forests, pulling the energy into cryptocurrency encryption protocols. Bhutan doesn’t have minerals in the conventional sense, so it has avoided exploitation by colonizers in the past. But this may be changing. Six of its seven dams have been constructed in the 21st century and more are on the way.
At the same time, Bhutan’s culture heavily leans into what one scholar calls topophilia: love of place. Elizabeth Allison says traditional Himalayan society sees the land as animated–alive. The Buddhism that permeates the Kingdom and its constitutional monarchy still hearkens back to times when people saw spirits in the trees and mountains. This creates “deity citadels,” sacred buildings and land which are off-limits to commercialism. One deity called Guru Rimpoche is a “green saint,” according to Allison, an environmental warrior who will protect the land from encroachment.
Such Green Saints may eventually clash with the ASIC energy-sucking demons. My money is on the Thunder Warrior.
