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"Bhutan's investment arm DHI and Jihan Wu's Bitdeer plan to set up a $500 million fund for crypto mining operations in the country. Bhutan quietly began mining bitcoin when the price of the cryptocurrency was around $5,000."

The commercial and investment arm of Royal Government of Bhutan, Druk Holding and Investments (KHI), has been mining bitcoin since April 2019 when the crypto-asset was priced around $5,000 (versus the current $28,000 or so). KHI is exploiting the country's vast amounts of cheap energy generated through its hydro projects. Plus the the country's high mountain passes or mountains provide natural cooling for the mining rigs that would consume a lot of power for air conditioning in warmer places. https://thebhutanese.bt/dhi-confirms-that-it-is-mining-digital-assets/

"The Himalayan kingdom has quietly been dumping millions of dollars into bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Its investments, which have never been publicly disclosed, were revealed in the bankruptcy filings of lenders BlockFi and Celsius."

Bhutan's government investment arm, Druk Holding & Investments, and Bitdeer Technologies Group are planning a six-fold ramp up of their Bitcoin mining operation to help offset the revenue impact of the upcoming "halving". The planned hardware upgrades will increase Bhutan's mining capacity by 500 megawatts by the first half of 2025.

Bhutan's Royal Monetary Authority (RMA) will reportedly use a private version of Ripple Lab's open-source XRP Ledger solution to pilot retail, wholesale and cross border use cases for a digital Ngultrum central bank digital currency (CBDC) in phases. Ripple's CBDC solution ensures central banks have greater control over issuance, management, privacy, and validation than they would get with public blockchains, and it can handle payments at the volume of transactions required by a successful retail CBDC.

Ripple will reportedly participate in the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's (HKMA's) digital Hong Kong dollar (e-HKD) central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot program by showcasing a real estate asset tokenization solution. Ripple will partner with Taiwan's Fubon Bank and others to demonstrate equity release with tokenized assets using a retail version of the e-HKD CBDC. The pilot project will run on the new Ripple CBDC Platform, that uses a new private ledger with XRP Ledger technology and enhanced functionality, including offline transactions and non-smartphone use. It's the same platform that may be piloted in Bhutan, Montenegro and Palau.

"The Himalayan Kingdom quietly spent millions building its own bitcoin mining operation. Now, using satellite imagery, Forbes has uncovered the secret locations of the world's largest state-owned mines."

India's National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has extended access to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to non-resident Indians from 10 countries (Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States). Indians living abroad comprise the world's largest overseas remittance-sending diaspora.  Other countries like Nepal, Bhutan, and Singapore, have already signed deals with NPCI to integrate their payment networks with UPI, enabling seamless cross-border payments. https://www.npci.org.in/PDF/npci/upi/circular/2023/UPI-OC-161-Extension-to-UPI-Circular-No-60-Crediting-Debiting-Non-Resident-accounts-in-UPI.pdf