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Nansen to Set Up Operations in Bhutan’s Gelephu Mindfulness City

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Nansen to Set Up Operations in Bhutan's Gelephu Mindfulness City

On-chain analytics platform Nansen is establishing an operational presence in Bhutan’s Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC). The move marks another step in the small Himalayan kingdom’s push to build a sovereign digital asset ecosystem.

More broadly, the deal underscores Bhutan’s accelerating ambition to build a sovereign-backed digital asset jurisdiction from the ground up. For Nansen, it is a bet that the next wave of growth will come from exactly that kind of ecosystem.

Not a Relocation

Under the collaboration announced Tuesday, Nansen plans to incorporate a local entity in GMC and hire a Bhutan-based team. In addition, the company will develop on-the-ground analytics capabilities to support the special administrative region’s expanding digital asset infrastructure.

The move is not a relocation. Nansen CEO and co-founder Alex Svanevik told BeInCrypto the company is keeping its Singapore headquarters intact.

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“We’re not leaving Singapore — this is an additional entity,” Svanevik said. “We chose GMC because of the vision behind it. Most crypto-friendly jurisdictions are optimizing for what exists today. Bhutan is building something fundamentally different — a values-driven economic zone with digital assets baked into the foundation, not bolted on as an afterthought.”

Why Bhutan

Established as a purpose-built special administrative region in southern Bhutan, GMC is designed around sustainable economic development. The region has attracted attention for its integration of digital assets at the sovereign level. That includes holding crypto in its strategic reserves and developing a regulatory framework purpose-built for the sector.

For Svanevik, that sovereign-level commitment is the key differentiator.

“GMC has crypto in its strategic reserves, a progressive regulatory framework purpose-built for digital assets, and genuine sovereign conviction behind it. That’s rare. We want to be pioneers in that ecosystem,” he said.

Expanding Beyond Analytics

The partnership reflects a broader shift in Nansen’s own strategy. The company in January rolled out AI-powered trade execution on Base and Solana and launched its AI agent on the web, moving beyond its roots as a wallet-labeling and analytics tool toward a full-stack on-chain trading platform.

“Nansen is becoming an AI-first platform for on-chain investing — analytics, trading execution, and AI agents working together,” Svanevik said. “In GMC’s ecosystem, that positions us well as the infrastructure matures around custody, tokenization, and institutional liquidity.”

Nansen currently tracks over 500 million labeled wallet addresses across major blockchains.

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Building Blocks, Not Hype

Still, the Nansen collaboration is the latest in GMC’s series of digital asset partnerships, spanning custody infrastructure, tokenization, institutional liquidity, and legal frameworks.

Jigdrel Singay, a board director at GMC, framed the approach as deliberately incremental.

“At GMC, we are focused on building the supporting layers — data, governance, and human capability — that enable innovation to develop responsibly,” Singay said.

Svanevik described Bhutan’s model as forward-looking rather than reactive.

“Bhutan is building something genuinely new — a jurisdiction designed for the future of finance, not retrofitted from the past,” he said.

Meanwhile, specific details on team size, office setup, and hiring timelines are still being finalized. Svanevik said the operational buildout will take shape over the coming months.

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Crypto World

Coinbase’s USDC Revenue Could Grow Seven Fold: Bloomberg

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Coinbase’s USDC Revenue Could Grow Seven Fold: Bloomberg

Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that Coinbase’s stablecoin revenue, which is largely tied to its USDC revenue share with Circle and already about 19% of total revenue in 2025, could grow by two to seven times if USDC adoption in payments accelerates.

Despite reporting a net loss of $667 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Coinbase’s Q4 2025 shareholder letter, the company netted around $1.35 billion in stablecoin revenue last year. 

That figure was up from $911 million in 2024, with $364 million in stablecoin revenue in Q4 2025 alone, as interest income on USDC (USDC) balances became a high-margin line for the exchange compared to volatile trading fees.

Stablecoins themselves have gone mainstream in usage terms. The total stablecoin transaction volume hit a record $33 trillion in 2025, with USDC accounting for about $18.3 trillion of that, ahead of Tether’s USDt (USDT) by transaction value, even though Tether still leads on market cap.

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Coinbase revenue 2025. Source: SEC 8-K filing

Politics of stablecoin yield

That growth is exactly why the politics around stablecoin yield have become so fraught. The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, signed by US President Donald Trump in July 2025, created a federal regime for payment stablecoins and explicitly bars issuers from paying interest or yield to holders.

Related: Who gets the yield? CLARITY Act becomes fight over onchain dollars

That provision is backed by the banking lobby because yield‑bearing stablecoins could siphon deposits from the traditional system. 

Banks and their allies now want to go further in the Senate’s Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act of 2025 negotiations by closing what they see as a loophole that still allows non‑issuer affiliates, such as exchanges like Coinbase, to pass some of the interest on reserves back to customers as “rewards.”

Draft Senate language of the market structure bill could extend the yield ban and prevent Coinbase from offering any rewards tied to stablecoin balances. 

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In January, Coinbase withdrew support for the bill after objecting to provisions that would restrict its ability to offer stablecoin rewards to customers.

Coinbase earns a share of interest income from USDC reserves through its partnership with Circle, and the companies split that revenue based on USDC distribution.

Ironically, Armstrong told investors that if Congress bans rewards, the company would simply keep more of the Circle revenue share, making the stablecoin line more profitable, despite users losing out on yield.

Cointelegraph reached out to Coinbase but had not received a response by publication time.

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What’s next for CLARITY?

The CLARITY Act, which bundles a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) split with tougher language on third‑party stablecoin yield, is currently working its way through the Senate.

Senator Bernie Moreno has said he expected the CLARITY Act to clear Congress as soon as April.

With stablecoins already accounting for nearly a fifth of Coinbase’s revenue and onchain dollar volumes hitting record highs, the eventual shape of those yield rules may matter more for Coinbase’s business model than the next crypto price cycle.

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