The Bhutan We Think We Know
Analysis
Long-form essays that connect the catalogue's paradoxes into the bigger arguments about how modern Bhutan actually works.
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How Much Bitcoin Has Bhutan Mined? Do the Math
Bhutan doesn't publish its Bitcoin holdings, so the press fills the gap with on-chain guesses and 'sell-off' headlines. But you don't need its books. You need its power capacity — which is public — and a calculator. The arithmetic tells a very different story.
30 June 2026 · 7 min read
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The Rupee Thread
Bhutan's economy has grown nearly five thousand-fold in sixty years — and barely two hundred-fold in dollars. The gap is the rupee, and it runs through everything: the budget, the paycheck, the power, the grants from Delhi. The single currency fact that explains the whole catalogue.
23 June 2026 · 8 min read
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The Atom and the Monsoon
Bhutan's rivers made it a clean-power exporter — yet every winter the hydro kingdom buys its own electricity back from India, and climate change is making the monsoon it depends on less reliable each year. So run the thought experiment: take the budget and the eighteen years poured into one troubled mega-dam, and build a reactor instead.
21 June 2026 · 7 min read
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The Accidental Currency Bet
Bhutan never decided to run a macro trade. But it is one — short the dollar through a rupee it doesn't print, long the rupee through power it sells at a discount, and lately long Bitcoin against both.
7 June 2026 · 6 min read
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The Momo Index
Bhutan has no McDonald's, so it cannot have a Big Mac Index. It has something better. Priced in plates of momo, a fresh graduate's first paycheck buys about a third fewer plates than it did twenty years ago — the clearest gauge of what is happening to Bhutanese money.
7 June 2026 · 5 min read
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What If Bhutan Pegged to the Dollar?
Bhutan's money is short the dollar by inheritance, tied to a rupee that keeps weakening against it. So why not cut out the middle currency and peg to the dollar directly? A thought experiment — the case for, the case against, and the version that might actually happen.
7 June 2026 · 7 min read