I think it's kind of wild that you can just take a latent or otherwise inaccessible source of power and now convert it into money.<p>And it doesn't <i>really</i> matter what the price of BTC is for something like this, as the resource is more or less entirely unused. It's just sitting there, doing nothing, so <i>any</i> value you can make out of it is better than the nothing they're already getting.
> “It’s concerning that Bhutan's resources have been invested in a secretive manner in a highly volatile and risky investment which has a big environmental burden,” says one former international advisor, who asked not to be identified.<p>Hahahah. Why? First world nations do this on the regular.
If you follow Major Jason Lowery at all, <a href="https://twitter.com/JasonPLowery" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/JasonPLowery</a>, this seems to align with his thesis of bitcoin proof of work mining becoming a form of power competition and warfare between sovereigns.
I'm deeply skeptical of crypto, but <i>if</i> you have to build mines somewhere, Bhutan is one of the less bad places to do it: cold climate and plenty of hydropower. And it's still more environmentally friendly than other options for soaking up excess power, like giant aluminum smelters.
Bitcoin mining can be thought of as a way to convert energy to $$$ without any transmission costs (long distance wiring, transformers, batteries, etc.)<p>So, if you have a power source, and it is too far from where energy is needed, just use that power source to mine, and make bitcoins.
Good. We need more countries in power against the big ones like US or China. While what they have is probably nothing compared to big countries, it's a step in the right direction to get rid of US dominance on economy.
is it true that bhutan is not fazed by china and taiwan<p>i just saw a meme of it but im looking for confirmations lol<p>sometimes its the countries yoy dont hear in mainstream news that surprises you
> it had begun mining “a few years ago as one of the early entrants when the price of Bitcoin was around USD 5,000.”<p>The most important bit of evidence that nobody there knows what they're doing and that the crypto grifters have swindles an entire country's government.<p>"Early entrants" were mining in 2009/2010. Maybe even as late as 2012 or 2014 might count as an "early entrant" - around the first halving and when the difficulty jumped past 1.0E+6