## Bhutan's Bitcoin Experiment Unwinds

Bhutan is quietly unwinding one of the most unusual **bitcoin experiments** any government has ever run. The Royal Government of Bhutan transferred roughly **319.7 BTC** worth $22.68 million to two addresses on Thursday, according to Arkham Intelligence data. Roughly 250 BTC went to a wallet previously used to route funds for sale via Galaxy Digital and OKX. Another 69.7 BTC was sent to a new, unmarked address.

This transaction is part of a series of ongoing sales that have been going on for a while.

Bhutan held approximately **13,000 BTC** in October 2024, accumulated through a **hydropower-backed mining operation** run by Druk Holding and Investments, the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund. That was the proof-of-concept for **sovereign bitcoin mining**—a tiny, landlocked country with cheap renewable energy, no legacy financial infrastructure to protect, and a sovereign wealth fund willing to experiment.

Since then, it has sold steadily. Holdings now stand at **3,954 BTC** worth roughly $280.6 million, a **70% reduction in 18 months**. Arkham data shows **$215.7 million in bitcoin** has moved out of Bhutan's holding addresses this year alone, with $162.6 million of that going to unlabeled wallets.

![Bhutan (Sittichok Glomvinya/Pixabay)](https://www.coindesk.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2Fs3y3vcno%2Fproduction%2F850c38128aa8b785d3e9dcb693fdf3c390bde105-1920x1440.jpg%3Fauto%3Dformat&w=3840&q=75)

### The Selling Accelerates in a Bullish Market

The selling has accelerated into a market where virtually every other major holder is doing the opposite. **Strategy bought 4,871 BTC** for $330 million last weekend, bringing its total to 766,970. U.S. spot ETFs absorbed approximately **50,000 BTC in March**. The Ethereum Foundation staked $93 million of ether in a single day rather than sell. Even gold-backed sovereign funds have been adding to positions during the Iran conflict.

Bhutan is the **only sovereign-level holder visibly liquidating**. But there is also a question about whether the mining operation itself is still running.

Arkham data shows Bhutan's last **bitcoin inflow exceeding $100,000** was recorded over a year ago. A government that once generated bitcoin from power harnessed from its own rivers may now simply be spending down what it accumulated, with no new supply coming in to replace what it sells.

Druk Holdings has not responded to several emails and calls from CoinDesk over the past week, the latest of which was sent in the Asian morning hours on Friday. It has not publicly commented on the transfers or the status of its mining operation.

![(CoinDesk)](https://www.coindesk.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2Fs3y3vcno%2Fproduction%2Fc6805e28f7f2ca5a11158db92fa063057a06e675-1494x1154.png%3Fauto%3Dformat&w=3840&q=75)

### The Economics Behind the Shift

The economics may explain the shift, however. Bhutan's mining operation was viable when difficulty was lower, and bitcoin traded above **$90,000**. At current levels near $71,000, with network difficulty at **all-time highs** and the post-halving block reward reduced to **3.125 BTC**, the margins on small-scale sovereign mining have compressed significantly.

The same hydropower that made Bhutan's operation novel may now generate more **revenue from electricity sold to neighboring India** than from bitcoin mining, as mining hardware depreciates with every difficulty adjustment.

Choosing to sell rather than hold or mine is a data point about the gap between bitcoin's narrative appeal to nation-states and the operational reality of maintaining a position through a prolonged drawdown.

Bhutan's remaining 3,954 BTC is now smaller than what Strategy purchases in a typical week. The kingdom that once held 13,000 bitcoin mined from its own mountains is watching a single company in Virginia accumulate more in five days than Bhutan has left.

The kingdom's holdings have dropped from 13,000 BTC to 3,954 since October 2024, with $215.7 million moved out this year alone. Its last mining inflow over $100,000 was recorded more than a year ago.

Bhutan's Bitcoin Exodus: 70% of Sovereign Holdings Sold as Mining Operation Goes Silent

**Covenant AI**, a major subnet developer on the AI-focused blockchain network **Bittensor**, announced on Thursday that it is leaving the ecosystem entirely.

In a [statement on X](https://x.com/covenant_ai/status/2042380152831951300), Covenant AI Founder Sam Dare declared the company can no longer build on Bittensor because the network's governance contradicts its stated commitment to **decentralization**.

"The entire premise of Bittensor, the promise that drew builders, miners, validators, and investors into this ecosystem, is that no single entity controls it," Dare wrote. "That promise is a lie."

The Covenant founder explained that the team has been building on the conviction that **AI model training** should not be controlled by a single entity, delivering on that mission by developing **Covenant-72B** into the largest decentralized case of LLM pre-training run in history. These efforts positioned Covenant as one of the most prominent subnets on Bittensor.

Despite this success, Covenant has decided to exit the network, citing Bittensor Co-founder **Jacob Steeves** (also known as Const) as the primary reason for departure.

## 'Decentralization Theatre'

Dare claimed that Bittensor operates under a "triumvirate structure" with three individuals managing multisig for network upgrades, presenting it as distributed governance to the community.

"It is not. It is decentralization theatre," Dare said. "Jacob Steeves maintains effective control over the triumvirate, resists any meaningful transfer of authority, and deploys changes unilaterally whenever he chooses, without process and without consensus."

Dare alleged that Steeves has recently taken actions against Covenant that undermine Bittensor's decentralization principles, including:
- Suspending emissions to Covenant's subnets
- Removing the team's moderation capabilities over its community channels
- Unilaterally deprecating its subnet infrastructure
- Applying direct economic pressure through large, visible token sales timed to coincide with operational conflicts

"They were punitive actions taken by one man who never relinquished control of a network he tells the world he no longer runs," Dare added.

The Covenant founder stated that the team's efforts in decentralized AI training will continue outside of Bittensor and will announce new projects in the near term.

## Market Impact and Reactions

The [price of Bittensor's TAO token](https://www.theblock.co/price/268328/bittensor-tao-usd) fell sharply following Covenant's announcement, dropping **15%** to a low of $285 from $338 within just two hours. The price has since recovered to $294.

The statement sparked a wave of reactions on X, with many users expressing shock at the sudden departure while also criticizing Covenant for leaving without prior communication to its community.

"This was a very egotistical and non-classy and dishonorable way of dealing with internal issues by Sam and team," one X user wrote in a reply to the statement.

## Bittensor's Response

Steeves indirectly responded to Covenant's announcement without addressing Dare's specific claims.

"This will prove to birth the first subnets on Bittensor that run headless and as true commodities," Steeves [wrote on X](https://x.com/const_reborn/status/2042410716271948281?s=20).

In a following X [post](https://x.com/const_reborn/status/2042427496751063191), Steeves wrote — "The outcome of this eventful evening is that Bittensor will invent lock-based subnet ownership." The Bittensor co-founder explained this means ownership will be determined by a team's long-term commitment to a project.

"This will mean: 1) investors see long in advance if an owner has unlocked their tokens, 2) be able to reprice the subnet before the owner, and 3) liquidly direct their own conviction to another team, or agent, to manage the system," Steeves wrote.

Mark Jefferey, partner at Bittensor Fund, also [commented](https://x.com/markjeffrey/status/2042400851017547820) — "Bittensor is quite a LOT more than Subnet 3, and $TAO will carry on fine without it."

Covenant AI claimed Bittensor's decentralization promise is false, citing 'punitive actions' from the network's co-founder, Jacob Steeves.

Bittensor's 'Decentralization Theatre' Exposed: Major AI Developer Exodus Sends TAO Plummeting 15%

A StarkWare researcher has unveiled a groundbreaking method to make Bitcoin transactions quantum-resistant on the live network today—without requiring any changes to the Bitcoin protocol. However, this breakthrough comes with a significant cost: up to $200 per transaction, positioning it as an emergency measure rather than a permanent solution.

In a [paper published this week](https://github.com/avihu28/Quantum-Safe-Bitcoin-Transactions/), StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy introduced **Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB)**, a scheme designed to enable quantum-resistant transactions by replacing signature-based security with **hash-based proofs**. This approach survives the type of quantum attack that could compromise today's cryptography but shifts the burden from consensus to computation, requiring heavy off-chain GPU work for every transaction.

### How QSB Works
Traditional digital signatures in Bitcoin, known as **ECDSA signatures**, are secure against current computers but vulnerable to future quantum computers that could derive secret keys from public keys. QSB addresses this flaw by redesigning the system around **hash-based cryptography**, which creates a unique mathematical digest of data that is extremely difficult to forge or reverse, even for powerful quantum computers.

**Key advantage**: QSB operates entirely within Bitcoin's existing consensus rules for legacy transactions. It requires **no soft fork**, no miner signaling, and no activation timeline. This contrasts sharply with **BIP-360**, the quantum-resistance proposal merged into Bitcoin's improvement repository in February, which faces years of governance delays and has no Bitcoin Core implementation yet.

### The Cost Factor
While the hash-based solution provides quantum resistance, it comes with **extremely expensive transactions**. Generating a valid QSB transaction requires searching through billions of possible candidates, a process Levy estimates would cost between **$75 and $200** using commodity cloud GPUs. For comparison, the current average cost to send a Bitcoin transaction is around **33 cents**.

### Practical Limitations
QSB transactions also face practical hurdles:
- They don't move through Bitcoin's normal blockchain like typical payments; users must send them directly to miners willing to process them.
- They are incompatible with faster, cheaper layers like the **Lightning Network**.
- Creating a transaction requires outsourcing heavy computation to external hardware, making it far more complex than standard wallet operations.

### Emergency Measure vs. Long-Term Solution
Levy describes QSB as a **"last resort measure"**—not a replacement for protocol-level upgrades. Proposals like BIP-360, which aim to introduce quantum-resistant signature schemes through a soft fork, remain the more scalable long-term solution but could take years to activate. Bitcoin's governance history shows such upgrades can be slow; Taproot took roughly **seven and a half years** from concept to deployment.

QSB offers a way to survive a quantum break using today's rules—if users are willing to pay the price. As quantum computers capable of breaking current encryption aren't imminent, this scheme provides an **emergency fallback** while the community works on more permanent solutions.

A new scheme from a StarkWare researcher works under existing consensus rules, offering an emergency fallback while BIP-360 awaits activation.

Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Now Available Without Protocol Changes - But at a $200 Price Tag Per Transaction

The **XRP** price has been trading between **$1.28 and $1.40** for most of 2026, with rallies toward $1.40 often met by selling pressure above $1.45. While many analysts focus on whether XRP can hold **$1.35** or drop back to $1.28, crypto analyst **Javon Marks** has posted a chart predicting a price target of just under **$17**, representing over **1,100% upside** from current levels.

Marks, who accurately called XRP's move from $0.56 to $2.47 in January 2024, bases this new prediction on a **pennant breakout pattern** that began forming in 2017. If this pattern plays out, XRP could become a **trillion-dollar asset**.

## The Chart Pattern Behind the $17 XRP Price Target

![XRP crypto currency](https://247wallst.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/shutterstock-1092306998-huge-licensed-scaled.jpg)

In 2017, **XRP surged from $0.006 to $3.31** in one of its biggest rallies ever. Following this move, the price consolidated for seven years within a pennant pattern—a technical formation where prices trade within tightening ranges after a significant move, often preceding a continuation in the same direction.

In late 2024, **XRP broke out of this pennant** during the post-election crypto rally, jumping from $0.49 to over $3.60 by mid-2025. Marks uses a **measured move** technique, projecting the size of the 2017 rally forward from the 2024 breakout point, which lands at **$16.39**—just under his $17 target.

XRP has already moved **647% from the breakout** before pulling back to around $1.35. Marks argues this pullback is part of the pattern, not a sign of failure, noting similar retracements occurred in 2017 before the full measured move completed.

## What Would It Actually Take for XRP to Reach $17?

![Ripple (XRP) and cryptocurrency investing concept - Physical metal Ripple coins with global trading exchange market chart in the background.](https://247wallst.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/shutterstock-1121509907-huge-licensed-scaled.jpg)

At $17, XRP's market cap would approach **$1 trillion** based on the current circulating supply of about 61 billion tokens—a level no altcoin has ever reached. For comparison, **Ethereum** peaked near $600 billion, and **Bitcoin's** current market cap is around $1.4 trillion. Achieving this would likely require the total crypto market to exceed **$8 trillion**, more than triple its current size.

Several factors must align for XRP to reach such a valuation:
- Banks on **Ripple's network** would need to start settling in XRP instead of RLUSD and fiat, which depends on the **CLARITY Act** passing to provide legal clarity.
- **XRP ETF inflows** must surpass the $1.2 billion attracted so far, requiring sustained institutional investment in the tens of billions over multiple years.
- Real-world adoption must scale massively, as seen in demos at the **XRP Tokyo 2026 conference**, where transactions settled in under four seconds using **XRP as a bridge asset**.

Marks emphasizes this prediction is for the full market cycle, not an overnight event, with measured moves potentially taking months or years to complete.

## Can XRP Realistically Hit $17 This Cycle?

While the **pennant breakout** is a valid technical setup and Marks has a track record of accuracy, reaching $17 demands more than chart patterns. It requires **banks and institutions to adopt XRP at scale** for cross-border payments, a process that has begun but is far from the level needed for a trillion-dollar valuation.

For XRP holders, the immediate focus should be on whether the price can **reclaim $2 and challenge $3.65** before considering double-digit targets. The $17 prediction represents a long-term cycle play, highlighting the importance of patience and monitoring adoption trends.

XRP price prediction as analyst predicts XRP could hit $17 based on a 2017 pennant breakout. Here's our verdict on XRP reaching $17.

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