Crypto miner Bitdeer expands to Bhutan, partners state-owned investment arm

Timmy Shen

1 year ago

A Buddhist monastery high in the Himalayas near Paro in the Kingdom of Bhutan. Image: Envato Elements

Singapore-headquartered cryptocurrency miner Bitdeer Technologies is planning to expand its mining operations to Bhutan and raise up to US$500 million for a fund through a new partnership with the Himalayan kingdom’s state-owned investment company Druk Holding and Investments (DHI), the mining firm said on Wednesday in a statement.

Fast facts

Bitdeer and DHI plan to start raising capital at the end of May, targeting institutional investors, to finance the pair’s green crypto mining operations in Bhutan, and Bitdeer will serve as the general partner with DHI as a strategic limited partner, according to the statement.
“We are excited to be working alongside DHI in accessing Bhutan’s zero-emissions power to sustainably enable the blockchain technologies that will eventually form an immutable bedrock for a global store of value,” Jihan Wu, chairman of Bitdeer, said in the statement.
Bitdeer’s latest partnership in Bhutan comes after the company said last month in a regulatory filing that it expects to generate 100 megawatts of power for mining from Bhutan, where the construction of mining facilities is expected to commence in the second quarter of this year and complete in the third quarter of 2023.
As of the end of 2022, Bitdeer operated six mining centers in the U.S. and Norway with an aggregate power capacity of 775 megawatts.
Bitdeer, which was spun off from Chinese mining machine maker Bitmain, went public on Nasdaq on April 14 via a US$1.18 billion special purpose acquisition company merger. Its shares closed 2.11% down at US$7.19 on Tuesday.
In its latest earnings report released last month, Bitdeer reported a net loss of US$60.4 million in 2022, compared to a net profit of US$82.6 million in 2021.
Bhutan, landlocked between China and India and home to abundant hydropower resources, has reportedly been mining cryptocurrency over the past few years, with DHI, a sovereign entity, “secretly” pouring millions of dollars into crypto holdings, Forbes reported last week.