Bhutan Hires 3iQ to Run Sovereign Bitcoin for Gelephu City

sandmark.com 2 h

Bitcoin

Bhutan has selected Canada's 3iQ to manage part of the Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC) sovereign Bitcoin ($BTC) reserve. The mandate advances the landlocked South Asian kingdom's plan to build a regulated digital finance hub inside a 21-year urban project on its southern border.

10,000-coin allocation

The Toronto-based firm will deploy a portion of the up to 10,000 bitcoins, worth about $628mn at current prices, that Bhutan's King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck committed to GMC's development in December 2025, drawn from national holdings. Bhutan's sovereign wealth fund, Druk Holding & Investments (DHI), held approximately 13,000 bitcoins at its October 2024 peak, according to Arkham Intelligence.

Arkham-labelled DHI wallets have since fallen by more than three-quarters from that peak, to about 3,100 $BTC ($197mn) as of mid-May 2026 – a drawdown Arkham interprets as sales, but which DHI has publicly denied. Even so, the Kingdom of Happiness, with a population of around 802,000, punches well above its weight, ranking within the top 10 largest sovereign holders of Bitcoin.

Under the strategic partnership jointly announced on 30 Jul, the Toronto-based firm will also support talent development and establish a long-term presence in GMC, which spans more than 2,500 sq km near the Indian border. GMC will operate as a Special Administrative Region to draw international business while focusing on “mindfulness, sustainability, and innovation,” the joint statement said.

Long-term bet

"GMC's ambition for Gelephu is bold and forward-thinking, and we're proud to bring our institutional discipline and global track record to help realize it, putting Bhutan's capital to work responsibly, transparently and for the long term," Pascal St-Jean, director and CEO of 3iQ, said in the statement. 3iQ is a subsidiary of Coincheck Group, a Nasdaq-listed holding company based in the Netherlands.

Jigdrel Singay, a board director of GMC, described the partnership in the statement as "an important first step" in building the city's "next-generation institutional digital asset management hub".

GMC did not disclose whether the mandate was awarded through a competitive process. Neither party's statement referenced a public tender, and 3iQ was described in the announcement as a "founding institutional partner."

GMC has entered similar strategic partnerships with other firms without disclosing selection processes, including a December 2025 memorandum of understanding with US market maker Cumberland DRW covering digital-asset infrastructure and stablecoin work, and a February arrangement with blockchain analytics firm Nansen.

GMC and 3iQ did not immediately respond to questions about the 3iQ selection process or how the new mandate relates to those earlier partnerships.

Nine bridges to happiness

GMC, which was announced on 17 Dec 2023, is in its initial phase of a 21-year timeline for completion. Designed by Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), the untraditional layout will feature nine massive, multi-storey timber bridges that act as "vibrant cultural and civic destinations," according to the firm. Each major bridge is customized to support a specific domain of Gross National Happiness (GNH).

Introduced in the 1970s by the current monarch's father, Bhutan's Fourth King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the metric is used alongside conventional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and centres on citizens' well-being.

Rare sovereign strategy

Bhutan, alongside El Salvador and the UAE, is one of a handful of nations that deliberately built their holdings through state-sponsored operations. Much larger Bitcoin holders, including the US, China and the UK, hold the most Bitcoin primarily because of seizures from cybercriminals.

GMC has already drawn other digital-asset infrastructure into its Special Administrative Region. Last December it launched a gold-backed sovereign token on Solana, in partnership with the tokenization arm of Matrixport Group. Crypto exchange BTSE has received in-principle approval for a Bhutan-based trading and custody licence, and Bhutan's sovereign wealth fund runs a validator node on a separate blockchain network.