Canadian digital asset supervisor 3iQ Corp. will work to handle a number of the Bitcoin reserves of Bhutan’s Gelephu Mindfulness Metropolis challenge.
3iQ, Canada’s greatest and oldest digital asset fund supervisor, won’t solely handle the ten,000 Bitcoins pledged to construct the brand new area, but in addition spend money on native expertise and set up a long-term bodily presence in Gelephu because the area positions itself as Bhutan’s new offshore digital monetary hub, in line with a press release.
Bhutan final 12 months mentioned it might use 10,000 Bitcoins to fund a particular administrative area referred to as the Gelephu Mindfulness Metropolis. First introduced in 2023, the GMC will likely be “a world-class financial hub in southern Bhutan.”
“From the very inception we had been aligned with GMC’s imaginative and prescient to create a next-generation financial hub that draws world expertise whereas being dedicated to Bhutan’s cultural values and environmental ideas,” 3iQ’s director and CEO, Pascal St-Jean, mentioned in a press release.
The GMC’s Board Director, Jigdrel Singay, added: “Past their institutional experience and world monitor document in digital asset administration, what stood out to us was their real dedication to investing in individuals, transferring data and constructing native capabilities.”
Bhutan has been shopping for Bitcoin for years, and the GMC challenge is a manner of utilizing its stack to
Bhutan began quietly mining Bitcoin in 2019. Then, in 2024, it introduced it held a reserve of the digital cash earlier than in January 2025 saying it might maintain different cryptocurrencies on its steadiness sheet.
In accordance with Bhutan’s authorities, the GMC, will likely be “a brand new financial hub in southern Bhutan designed round mindfulness, sustainability, and innovation,” and is central to Bhutan’s broader effort to diversify its financial system past hydropower and tourism.
The plan is much like El Salvador‘s crypto ambitions. The tiny Central American nation additionally introduced plans in 2021 for a wise metropolis dubbed “Bitcoin Metropolis” — a tax-free financial hub geared toward attracting the nomadic rich and tech entrepreneurs, funded through Bitcoin-backed tokenized bonds.