A data-driven research project examining whether 113 Bhutanese adults are prepared to adopt cryptocurrency — aligned with Gross National Happiness values.
8 sections covering the full DrukShift research project from problem to conclusion.
Background, context and the DrukShift name
Why crypto readiness matters in Bhutan
Survey design, data collection and analysis
7 critical insights from 113 Bhutanese adults
Mapping crypto readiness to happiness domains
5 evidence-based solutions for Bhutan
The live DrukShift platform and technology
Summary, impact and future directions
I am Kinzang Choden, a 3rd year Business Intelligence student. I developed DrukShift during my internship in 2026 at Bhutan Data Scientists Pvt. Ltd. I conceived, designed, researched, and built this entire project myself — from the survey to the live website.
I chose the name DrukShift deliberately. Druk refers to Bhutan's identity as the Land of the Thunder Dragon. Shift represents the move toward a digital financial future. Together, DrukShift captures the spirit of my research: how does Bhutan shift toward cryptocurrency adoption while staying true to its unique values?
Through this project I delivered a live interactive website at kinzang7066.github.io, a Node.js backend deployed on Render, a MongoDB database collecting real responses, 18 Tableau visualizations, a personalised quiz engine, an admin dashboard, a gamification system, 3 educational mini games, a 10-page illustrated webtoon, an interactive crypto payment prototype called DrukShift Pay, and a full crypto wallet prototype called DrukShift Wallet.
When I started my internship I noticed something important. Bhutan had quietly become one of Asia's largest Bitcoin mining operations, powered entirely by hydropower. Nansen announced a partnership with the Gelephu Mindfulness City in 2026. The Royal Government of Bhutan held billions of dollars in Bitcoin. Yet when I looked around at ordinary Bhutanese people — my family, neighbours, shopkeepers in the market — I realised nobody had ever asked them a simple question: Are you ready?
I saw a significant gap between Bhutan's institutional crypto presence and the readiness of individual citizens. Without understanding baseline readiness, any cryptocurrency education or adoption initiative would lack the evidence base it needed. I decided to fill that gap myself.
Bhutan's government was investing in cryptocurrency infrastructure at a national level, while individual citizens lacked the knowledge, digital skills, and security awareness to participate safely or benefit meaningfully. No systematic research had been conducted on individual-level crypto readiness in Bhutan.
The research also identified a secondary problem: any solution had to align with Gross National Happiness (GNH), Bhutan's philosophical framework for measuring national progress. Cryptocurrency adoption that compromised psychological wellbeing, community vitality, or governance integrity would be counter to Bhutanese values — even if economically beneficial.
DrukShift therefore framed the research not just as a technology readiness assessment, but as a happiness readiness assessment: measuring readiness across education, psychological wellbeing, governance, community, and infrastructure domains aligned with the GNH framework.
I designed my methodology to be rigorous, replicable, and relevant to Bhutan's specific context. I combined primary survey research with digital tool development to create both a dataset and a living platform that any Bhutanese person can use.
I designed a 10-question survey covering: Knowledge, Technical Skill, Trust, Security Awareness, Personal Readiness, Infrastructure (Internet), Digital Comfort, Regulatory Awareness, Adoption Willingness, and GNH Alignment. Each question used a 1–10 Likert scale for granular measurement.
I collected 113 survey responses from Bhutanese adults across multiple age groups (18–24, 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, 55+), occupations, and locations including Thimphu, Paro, Bumthang, and rural areas. I collected responses digitally and recorded them in a structured dataset.
I cleaned the raw survey data using Python. I removed incomplete responses, standardised all response formats, encoded demographic variables, and handled missing values. I then prepared the cleaned dataset for visualisation and statistical analysis.
I built 18 interactive Tableau charts covering age group distribution, area breakdown, payment frequency, crypto awareness, crypto understanding by age, trust levels, barriers, adoption willingness, Bhutan readiness, readiness by occupation, readiness score trends, internet access, bank access, device usage, what would help, security concern versus trust, readiness score distribution, and digital familiarity versus crypto understanding. I published everything to Tableau Public for open access.
I calculated a composite readiness score out of 16 for every respondent by adding up four specific question scores. Question 13 on digital familiarity scored 1 to 4. Question 15 on crypto understanding scored 1 to 4. Question 18 on personal readiness scored 1 to 5. Question 19 on adoption willingness scored 1 to 3. The maximum possible score was 16. The Bhutan-wide average came out at 12.73 out of 16 which equals 80%. I used this as the benchmark to contextualise every individual quiz result on the website.
I built a live interactive website from scratch to make my findings accessible to every Bhutanese person. I had never built a full-stack website before this internship. I learned HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node.js, Express, and MongoDB entirely during this project. I hosted the frontend on GitHub Pages, the backend on Render, and the database on MongoDB Atlas. I went through two versions — the original version and DrukShift v0.01 — improving the design, features, and performance at each stage.
| # | Question Domain | What It Measured |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 | Knowledge | Familiarity with what cryptocurrency is |
| Q2 | Technical Skill | Confidence using crypto wallet features |
| Q3 | Trust | Trust in cryptocurrency as digital money |
| Q4 | Security Awareness | Awareness of crypto risks and scams |
| Q5 | Personal Readiness | Personal readiness to start transacting |
| Q6 | Infrastructure | Internet connection reliability |
| Q7 | Digital Comfort | Comfort with digital financial tools |
| Q8 | Regulatory Awareness | Awareness of Bhutan crypto regulations |
| Q9 | Adoption Willingness | Willingness to adopt if safe and legal |
| Q10 | GNH Alignment | Perceived crypto contribution to Bhutan |
After analysing my 113 survey responses I found seven critical insights that paint a nuanced picture of cryptocurrency readiness in Bhutan — a country simultaneously ahead of the world in institutional crypto adoption and behind in individual citizen readiness.
| Age Group | Average Score (/16) | Readiness % | Visual |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18–24 | 12.91 | 81% | |
| 25–34 | 13.74 | 86% | |
| 35–44 | 12.20 | 76% | |
| 45–54 | 10.88 | 68% | |
| 55+ | 7.83 | 49% |
Bhutan is unique in the world for measuring national progress through Gross National Happiness (GNH) rather than GDP alone. GNH evaluates progress across 9 domains including education, psychological wellbeing, governance, time use, and community vitality. Any proposal for change in Bhutan must be evaluated through a GNH lens.
I deliberately designed DrukShift to map cryptocurrency readiness against GNH domains. Through my research I found that cryptocurrency readiness is not merely a financial literacy question — it intersects directly with six of Bhutan's nine GNH domains.
Through DrukShift I demonstrated that cryptocurrency adoption in Bhutan must be GNH-first, not technology-first. Solutions that improve GNH domain scores will naturally accelerate safe, sustainable cryptocurrency adoption — and vice versa.
Based on my analysis of 113 survey responses, I developed five targeted recommendations. Each solution directly addresses a specific barrier I identified in my data and is aligned with GNH domain priorities. These are not generic crypto education suggestions — they are grounded in what real Bhutanese adults told me.
Bhutan became the world's first country to launch a national crypto tourism payment system in May 2025. Over 1,000 merchants registered with DK Bank to accept Binance Pay from tourists. But nearly a year later almost nobody is actually using it. Through investigative research using published journalism from Rest of World, Trade Brains and Lightspark I documented five real problems and five real solutions.
To ground this research in lived reality I documented a real case study — a family member who owns a small souvenir and handicraft shop in Thimphu and regularly loses tourist sales because she has no way to accept digital payment. Tourists visit, love the products, offer to pay by card or crypto, and leave empty-handed. This happens every week.
I wanted DrukShift to go beyond a traditional academic report. I transformed my research findings into a fully functional live website that allows any Bhutanese person to take the readiness quiz, receive a personalised improvement plan, explore my Tableau visualisations, and learn through mini games, a webtoon, a crypto payment prototype, and a crypto wallet prototype.
kinzang7066.github.io/Cryptocurrency_Readiness_In_Bhutan — A full-stack web application hosted on GitHub Pages with a Node.js backend on Render and a MongoDB Atlas database collecting real responses in real time.
I had never built a full-stack website before starting this internship. I built everything from scratch and learned as I went. I started with a simple HTML page and kept adding features based on my research findings and feedback from my supervisor. The website went through two full versions. The first version was a basic static site. DrukShift v0.01 added the full backend, personalised quiz engine, gamification, mini games, webtoon, and the DrukShift Pay prototype.
For the frontend I used plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript hosted on GitHub Pages. I designed the entire interface myself including the dark and light mode, hero slideshow, scroll animations, breadcrumb navigation, and mobile responsive layouts. For the backend I built a REST API using Node.js and Express, deployed on Render. The API handles quiz submissions, saves results to MongoDB Atlas, and powers the live quiz counter and admin dashboard. I also integrated email validation for user verification.
One of the features I am most proud of is the personalised solutions engine. After a user completes the quiz, the website analyses their specific answers and generates a tailored improvement plan. For example if someone rated their personal readiness as 1 out of 10 on Question 5, the plan explains exactly why that matters and what specific steps they should take next. This makes the experience feel personal rather than generic.
I also built DrukShift Pay — an interactive prototype showing how a cryptocurrency payment could work at a small Bhutanese shop. It simulates the full payment flow from QR code scan to blockchain confirmation to success receipt. I based it on Deki's Silk Shop from my webtoon to make it feel connected to the story I was telling throughout the project.
While building DrukShift Pay I realised that showing how a payment works is only half the story. The other half is showing where the money actually lives. This led to building the DrukShift Wallet — a full crypto wallet prototype designed specifically for Bhutanese people.
Since May 2025 tourists can already pay with cryptocurrency in Bhutan through Binance Pay across more than 1,000 registered merchants. The infrastructure exists and works. But nearly a year later almost nobody is using it. The reason is not technical — it is human. Merchants do not know how to confirm whether a payment has actually arrived. When a tourist pays in Bitcoin the merchant sees a notification in the Binance app but cannot understand it, cannot verify the amount in Ngultrum, and cannot confidently tell the tourist that the payment went through. This confusion and uncertainty made merchants reluctant to promote or even accept crypto payments at all — even though the money was already sitting in their account.
The DrukShift Wallet prototype directly addresses this. It is designed with Bhutanese people in mind — showing the balance in Ngultrum first alongside the Bitcoin and USDT equivalent, so the amount always feels familiar. Every transaction in the history screen clearly shows whether money came in or went out, the exact amount in Ngultrum, and a Confirmed status so there is never any doubt about whether the payment actually arrived.
The wallet includes six screens: a Home screen showing the full balance and recent transactions, a Send screen with a numpad and currency toggle between Ngultrum, Bitcoin and USDT, a Receive screen with a QR code and wallet address to share with customers, a Pay screen for scanning a shop's QR code, a History screen with filterable transaction records grouped by date, and a Learn screen explaining six core crypto concepts in simple Bhutanese terms.
Most importantly the wallet includes an Add Money on-ramp — a feature that shows Bhutanese people exactly how to convert their Ngultrum from their Bank of Bhutan mBoB account into Bitcoin. The on-ramp walks through four steps: selecting the bank, choosing the amount, following a step-by-step guide on what to do in the mBoB app, and then watching a simulation of the transfer being processed. This directly answers the question that many Bhutanese people ask — if I want to use crypto, how do I even get started with real Bhutanese money?
The user opens mBoB, taps Fund Transfer and sends Ngultrum to the DrukShift Exchange account. The exchange converts the Ngultrum to Bitcoin at the live rate minus a 0.5% fee and credits the DrukShift Wallet automatically. The whole process takes 2 to 5 minutes. The wallet then shows the new Bitcoin balance alongside its Ngultrum equivalent so the user always understands what they hold in familiar terms.
Through DrukShift I demonstrated that Bhutan has a strong foundation for cryptocurrency adoption — but significant, targeted work remains. The 80% overall readiness score is encouraging. The internet infrastructure gap, the education deficit in older generations, and the scam vulnerability in the 35–44 group are specific, solvable problems.
More importantly, what I found through this project is that cryptocurrency readiness in Bhutan is a happiness question. Every barrier identified maps to a GNH domain. Every solution proposed supports GNH values. Bhutan's path to safe, sustainable cryptocurrency adoption runs through happiness — not away from it.
My live DrukShift platform continues to collect real responses from Bhutanese adults, building a growing dataset that will only improve in value over time. With 113 real Bhutanese voices already captured, I believe DrukShift represents the first systematic, publicly accessible measurement of cryptocurrency readiness in the Kingdom of Bhutan.