One of the most potent symptoms of Bhutan’s crisis is the exodus of young, educated people to other countries in recent years – and their departure only compounds the country’s economic struggle.

In 2022 alone, more than 10 percent of Bhutan’s skilled and educated population left the country. Australia, one of the major destination countries, saw its Bhutanese immigrant population more than double in five years between 2016 and 2021.

This is where Bitcoin, as an economic resource, appears to have helped. In 2023, the Bhutanese government sold $100m of cryptocurrency to double the salaries of civil servants, Al Jazeera’s Smith reported from Thimphu.

Since then, the BBS reported a marginal decline in civil servants quitting their jobs. In the first quarter of 2024, 500 civil servants resigned, compared with the nearly 1,900 who resigned in the same period in 2023.

Bhutan exports hydroelectricity to India. But Bitcoin mining gives Bhutan an alternative to exports. Where tariff rates are good, it sells the power to India. In projects where the rates are not good, Bhutan keeps the power and uses it to mine Bitcoin instead, the ORF’s Shivamurthy explained.

“Instead of exporting [hydropower] at a very cheap rate, we are using it to mine Bitcoins in the high mountains of Bhutan,” Tenzing Lamsang, editor-in-chief of The Bhutanese newspaper, a private weekly based in Thimphu, told Al Jazeera.