11 Governments Sponsor Bitcoin Mining - Here’s How To Track Them

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According to research from VanEck, there are now 11 countries in the world which sponsor Bitcoin mining through the use of government resources. Japan, the fourth-largest economy in the world, has just joined this group as the eleventh country. 

The list includes many of the world’s leading economies as well as some developing economies. They are as follows: Bhutan, Iran, El Salvador, UAE, Oman, Ethiopia, Argentina, Kenya, and Japan. 

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The list shows a growing trend for government-sponsored BTC mining. Bhutan and Iran were early adopters in 2020. Bhutan – which is a deanonymized entity on Arkham Intel – uses hydroelectric power from Himalayan rivers which produce surplus energy in the summer months.

Iran is not a recognised Arkham entity and uses its abundant natural gas and oil supplies to generate electricity that is used for mining. 

VanEck’s list excludes the US government because the US’s sponsorship of Bitcoin mining is considered to be indirect and policy-driven rather than directly state-funded. The US is the largest government entity on the Arkham Intel Platform with $33 billion in assets, mostly from seizures.

Arkham has also identified the official holdings of the UAE, who have mined nearly all of their BTC holdings, and El Salvador. Arkham was the first to identify the public holdings of UAE, El Salvador and Bhutan. 

You can track these entities on Arkham by creating an account and setting up alerts. Alerts can be set up so that you are immediately notified whenever a specific entity is involved in a transaction. A single Arkham account gives you access to the industry-leading blockchain analytics platform – Arkham Intel Platform – and the Arkham Exchange for spot and perpetual trading. 

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In order to track the government-sponsored BTC mining activities of the other countries in the group of 11 that are not known Arkham entities, traders and investors will need to dig a little bit deeper. 

Japan’s BTC mining activities were announced recently and are structured as a collaboration with state-owned utility company Canaan. The project will act as a load balancer where mining operations are stopped when power demand is high, and resumed when demand is low.

For those seeking even more alpha, it may be helpful to look at Bitcoin’s hashrate index and identify countries with a growing hashrate. Ethiopia, for example, had 0% of the hashrate market share in 2021 but in Q1 of 2025 its market share was 1.5% and so far in Q4 its market share is 1.94%.

Hashrate is the total combined computational power that is being used to mine and process transactions on a Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain, such as Bitcoin.