The tiny country of Bhutan is quietly selling its bitcoin, and the stack is getting thinner each month.

The Royal Government of Bhutan moved 175 BTC worth $11.85 million late on Monday, according to Arkham Intelligence data, moving assets to the same bc1q wallet address that received 184 BTC worth $14.09 million in February. It suggests a consistent OTC or treasury management counterparty.

The activity is done by Bhutan’s state-owned investment arm, Druk Holding and Investments (DHI), which spearheads the country’s BTC mining operations.

The February activity was more extensive than a single transfer. Arkham’s outflow data shows four separate moves that month: the 184 BTC transfer, two sends to QCP Capital’s merchant deposit address totaling roughly 200 BTC worth $15 million combined, and a $1.5 million USDT transfer to a Binance hot wallet.

That’s about $30.7 million in February alone, followed by Monday’s $11.85 million, bringing 2026 outflows to roughly $42.5 million.

The QCP Capital transfers stand out as sending bitcoin to a trading firm’s deposit address twice in one month is more active than simple treasury drawdowns. It suggests OTC selling or structured liquidity management rather than just moving coins between cold wallets.

The balance history chart tells a bigger story, however.

Bhutan’s stack peaked around 13,000 BTC in late 2024, built up over several years through state-backed hydroelectric mining. The drawdown began in earnest after October 2024 and has been steep.

From 13,000 to roughly 5,400 is a 58% reduction in coins. The dollar value has been hit twice, by the selling and by bitcoin’s decline from around $119,000 at the peak to $69,000 today.

What was likely a position worth over $1.5 billion at its height is now $374 million.

In December, Bhutan unveiled a national Bitcoin Development Pledge committing up to 10,000 BTC to fund Gelephu Mindfulness City, a special economic zone designed to use digital assets for its financial reserves.

Bhutan mined its coins using surplus hydropower, which means the cost basis is effectively zero. Unlike Strategy or corporate treasuries that bought at market prices, there’s no break-even math pressuring these sales. Every transfer is profit.

The Arkham balance chart shows the full arc. A slow build from near zero in early 2021, steady accumulation through the bear market, a ramp to roughly 13,000 BTC by late 2024, and then a sharp decline that hasn’t let up.

The transfers have gone to the same counterparties in similar sizes without any obvious correlation to specific price moves, which looks more like a treasury running a planned drawdown than a holder getting shaken out.

Druk holdings did not immediately reply to CoinDesk’s request for comment in Asian morning hours.

Pudgy Penguins shipped its flagship game to the general public on Monday, and the most notable thing about it is that you wouldn’t know it had anything to do with crypto unless someone told you.

Pudgy World, the browser-based game first announced at Art Basel in late 2023, went live with 12 unique towns across a world called The Berg, narrative quests where players help a penguin named Pengu find someone named Polly, and a set of mini-games.

CoinDesk played a 10-minute session and came away with a simple takeaway. It’s smooth, responsive, intuitive, and clearly not built with a crypto-first user in mind.

The game could be pure Club Penguin nostalgia for some users. The game was Disney’s browser-based virtual world that ran from 2005 to 2017 and peaked at over 200 million registered users, mostly kids who customized penguin avatars and played mini-games.

It remains the template for what a mass-market penguin game looks like, and the comparison Pudgy World could be measured against in the broader audience.

The NFT gaming space has spent years producing products that feel like wallets with gameplay bolted on. Pudgy World goes the other direction, building something that works as a game first and connects to the token economy second.

Whether that translates to retention and revenue is a different question, but the UX approach is a deliberate break from the pattern.

The PENGU token responded, jumping 9% on the day. Pudgy Penguin NFT floor prices held flat in ETH terms, though ether itself was up 5%, meaning the dollar-denominated floor rose with it.

The broader context is that crypto gaming has mostly failed to produce anything people actually want to play. Projects that led with token incentives attracted mercenary farmers who left the moment monetary yields dried up.

Pudgy’s bet is that building an audience through toys, memes, and brand affinity first, then giving that audience a game, works better than the other way around.

One game launch doesn’t prove the thesis. But shipping a product that feels like a game rather than a DeFi dashboard is further than most NFT projects have gotten.

The Iran war and oil surge rocked global equity markets this month. Yet bitcoin BTC$69,799.81 barely budged — because large traders, institutional flows and sizeable wallet holders stepped in during the dips, keeping demand firm even as traditional markets wobbled.

Major oil benchmarks, Brent and WTI, have surged 30% this month, trading above $100 per barrel early Monday. The massive surge has weighed heavily on Asian equity markets and also caused downside volatility in Asian and European equities.

Bitcoin, however, has risen nearly 4% to $70,200 this month, according to CoinDesk data. The market has been propped by large traders snapping up BTC over-the-counter (OTC) in a privately negotiated deal, according to Paul Howard, senior director at high-frequency trading firm and liquidity provider Wincent.

“The demand has been driven by some large over-the-counter [OTC] trades, positioning for a swift end to the conflict in Iran, and also MSTR’s acquisition. The timing of which, with the geopolitical events, may be an indicator of confidence returning to risk assets,” Howard said in an email to CoinDesk.

OTC desks are private trading venues where buyers and sellers can execute large cryptocurrency transactions without going through public exchanges. Instead of placing orders on open order books, trades are negotiated directly between parties or facilitated by a broker. Large traders and institutions typically trade over-the-counter to avoid influencing the spot market price.

Howard also highlighted renewed investor interest in the popular “carry trade,” where traders short (bearish bet) Strategy (MSTR) stock while buying bitcoin ETFs at the same time. The strategy profits if BTC rises faster than MSTR falls, allowing traders to hedge risk while still benefiting from bitcoin’s moves.

Speaking of ETFs, the 11 U.S.-listed funds have registered net inflows of over $700 million this month, according to data source SoSoValue. That’s a sign of renewed institutional appetite for the cryptocurrency.

“Institutional flows have also turned supportive. Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have seen net inflows of around $1.7 billion since late February. This reversed a stretch of outflows that lasted roughly four months. For the March 8-10 period, flows contributed to a weekly net inflow of about $568 million,” Vikram Subburaj, CEO of India-based Giottus exchange, said.

Nexo, meanwhile, pointed to Strategy’s continued accumulation of bitcoin as a major bullish factor. The Nasdaq-listed firm purchased 17,994 BTC between March 2 and March 8, boosting its total holdings to 738,731 BTC.

The latest purchase matches several days’ worth of new bitcoin entering the market.

“The network has now surpassed 20 million BTC mined, leaving fewer than 1 million coins to be issued. At roughly 450 BTC per day, incremental supply remains limited. Strategy added 17,994 BTC, equivalent to approximately five weeks of issuance, bringing its holdings to roughly 3.7% of the circulating supply,” Nexo’s analyst Iliya Kalchev told CoinDesk.

Demand also funneled through bullish on-chain activity.

“Larger wallets holding more than 1,000 BTC added roughly 0.3% to their balances during recent dips. This points to prudent accumulation during periods of weakness,” Vikram Subburaj said.

He added that more than 400,000 BTC recently changed hands between $60,000 and $70,000.

Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm reacted after federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York asked a judge to schedule an October retrial on two criminal counts that a jury previously failed to resolve.

U.S. prosecutors push for second trial of Roman Storm after jury deadlock

In a letter filed with U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla, prosecutors requested that the court set a new trial date in October to retry Storm on conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions. These are the two charges on which jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict after weeks of testimony and deliberation.

The filing follows Storm’s earlier trial in Manhattan, which lasted roughly four weeks. At the conclusion of the proceedings, a 12-member jury returned a split outcome, reaching a verdict on one count while deadlocking on the two remaining charges.

As the jury could not reach a unanimous decision on those counts, the court declared a mistrial on them.

Prosecutors now argue that the unresolved charges should be retried before a new jury and proposed October as the timeframe for the proceedings.

Storm publicly responded to the filing in a social media post, saying the government was seeking another trial despite the earlier jury deadlock. He noted that jurors had been unable to reach a unanimous decision on the money-laundering and sanctions-related counts after hearing the full case presented by prosecutors.

According to Storm, the two unresolved counts together carry a potential sentence of up to 40 years in federal prison if a future jury were to convict.

“The 2 counts = up to 40 years in federal prison. For writing open-source code. For a protocol I don’t control. For transactions I never touched. A jury already couldn’t agree this was criminal. But the SDNY prosecutors want to keep trying with the hope of getting a different answer,” Storm wrote on Twitter.

Storm, who helped develop the privacy protocol Tornado Cash, also said the prospect of another trial poses significant financial challenges for his defense. He stated that his legal defense funds had largely been exhausted after the initial four-week trial.

Judge Failla has not yet ruled on the prosecutors’ request to set a new trial date or issued a schedule for how the case will proceed.

Excess leverage in crypto markets has virtually dissappeared which could result in a healthier spot-based market recovery, say analysts.

Global tensions, particularly the Iran-US conflict, have rattled crypto markets and pushed investors away from risk-taking.

“Periods like this are generally not favorable for risk-taking, and this can be clearly observed in the sharp decline of Bitcoin’s Estimated Leverage Ratio on Binance,” said CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost on Monday.

The metric measures the intensity with which investors use leverage and is calculated by comparing the futures Open Interest (OI) with the amount of BTC reserves held on the exchange. Since February, this ratio has fallen sharply from 0.198 to 0.152 — coinciding with Bitcoin dropping from $96,000to $69,000.

A Healthier Market Dynamic

If the ratio remains low while Bitcoin consolidates, it likely signals that spot buying rather than leveraged speculation is becoming the dominant price driver, which is a generally healthier dynamic.

“Lower leverage generally means less systemic pressure, which can help stabilize price action before the market enters a new directional phase.”

🗞️Bitcoin leverage reset after market volatility

“Since February, Bitcoin’s Estimated Leverage Ratio on Binance has dropped from 0.198 to 0.152, representing a significant and rapid decline. This type of move is typically observed after periods of strong volatility and major… pic.twitter.com/q1MVOR5CZa

— Darkfost (@Darkfost_Coc) March 9, 2026

In a separate post, CryptoQuant analyst “IT tech” said that “bottom callers are multiplying.” One metric just hit 29 consecutive days in distress territory, they added, highlighting the Bitcoin long-term holder-to-short-term holder SOPR ratio, which is at 0.89.

“Recent buyers are underwater. LTHs aren’t selling, but they’re not absorbing either. STH capitulation building, but nowhere near extremes. Calling a structural low here is premature.”

Meanwhile, Glassnode reported on Monday that momentum has “firmed modestly,” with RSI lifting from recent lows, “but price action still lacks the strength of a decisive bullish shift.”

“Spot activity remains subdued, with lower trading volume pointing to softer participation even as conditions begin to stabilize.”

Crypto Market Outlook

Spot markets have climbed 4.3% on the day to reach $2.46 trillion in a move that follows US President Trump’s comments that the war with Iran could be “over soon.” Bitcoin reclaimed $70,000 in early trading in Asia on Tuesday as oil prices tanked 28% from Monday’s high of $120.

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Ether remained weak, but it was holding above the $2,000 level at the time of writing. Meanwhile, some altcoins were seeing larger gains, including Hyperliquid and Zcash, which surged more than 11% each.

US prosecutors have requested a retrial of crypto mixer Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm after a jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict on two charges at his trial last year.

US Attorney for Manhattan Jay Clayton asked federal Judge Katherine Polk Failla in a letter on Monday for a trial date to retry Storm on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate sanctions.

The letter asked the court for the retrial to begin on or around Oct. 5 to 12, with the trial expected to last three weeks. It said prosecutors were prepared to retry the case as early as spring, between March and May, but Storm’s defense lawyers said they weren’t available until late 2026.

In August, a jury convicted Storm of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, but was deadlocked on the money laundering and sanctions violation conspiracy charges, which has allowed prosecutors to retry those charges.

Storm had pleaded not guilty and asked Judge Polk Failla in October to acquit him of the money transmitting charge, arguing prosecutors failed to prove he intended to help bad actors use Tornado Cash.

Clayton wrote in his letter that Storm’s lawyers told prosecutors that setting a new trial date was premature due to the pending acquittal motion, which wouldn’t be resolved until early April, when it is scheduled for argument.

Prosecutors hope for “different answer,” says Storm

Storm posted on X that the two counts the government plans to retry him on could see him spend “up to 40 years in federal prison. For writing open-source code. For a protocol I don’t control. For transactions I never touched.”

“A jury already couldn’t agree this was criminal. But the SDNY [Southern District of New York] prosecutors want to keep trying with the hope of getting a different answer,” he added.

Amanda Tuminelli, the legal chief at crypto advocacy group the DeFi Education Fund, said the Justice Department’s decision to retry Storm was “incredibly disappointing.”

“Despite failing to convince a jury the first time around, despite making obvious mistakes like calling irrelevant witnesses and not understanding the forensic analysis of their own blockchain evidence, and despite multiple legal and logical fallacies to their allegations of third-party dev liability, the SDNY will retry Roman Storm,” she added.

Related: DOJ finalizes $400M crypto forfeiture in Helix Bitcoin mixer case

Clayton’s letter comes as a report that the US Treasury submitted to Congress this month acknowledged some lawful uses of crypto mixers, including those who use such services “to maintain more privacy in their consumer spending habits.”

In his X post, Storm also noted that US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had issued a memo in April saying the Justice Department “is not a digital assets regulator,” and the agency would “no longer pursue litigation or enforcement actions that have the effect of superimposing regulatory frameworks on digital assets.”

“Same country, same DOJ — just filed to retry me anyway,” Storm said.

Magazine: Can privacy survive in US crypto policy after Roman Storm’s conviction?