Bhutan Times the Top, CLARITY Hits Markup, and the Onchain Pokemon Card Boom | The Breakdown

Bhutan's sovereign investment arm Druk Holdings began mining Bitcoin using hydropower, also made deposits to Celsius, operates as an Ethereum validator, and has activity on other chains. Holdings peaked above 1.4 billion dollars in July 2024 per Arkham data. Bhutan's largest single sale came around October 2025 at close to half a billion dollars, and by last month it had offloaded roughly 70 percent of its total Bitcoin holdings. Arkham data covering the past ten months shows no inbound transfers from any mining pools including Ant Pool, suggesting Bhutan has stopped mining entirely and is now exclusively selling. The 467 million dollar figure represents raw revenue above the dollar value at time of mining, before overhead costs.

Marathon Digital has followed a similar selling trajectory and, aside from Bhutan's large October dump, has actually been selling more Bitcoin than Bhutan and continues to do so, with Marathon among the miners pivoting to AI services and using Bitcoin sales to fund those developments. When Strategy's purchase flows are added to the same chart, Strategy's buying vastly outweighs the combined selling from both entities. Bitcoin ETF net flows showed the best inflows week on record since January at the time of recording. The argument made is that ETF buying and Strategy buying are the two metrics that matter most for Bitcoin price, and that cumulative net outflows from all publicly traded miners combined would not outweigh what Strategy alone is buying.

The CLARITY Act was scheduled for markup on May 14th, described as the final stage of debate before a bill moves forward, though the language has been changing constantly and could be amended again. Crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro stated the updated language is much better than prior versions on respecting decentralization and removes what he called the we did not promise anything unregulated loophole. Three triggers classify a protocol as not decentralized, including a person or group under common control being able to control or materially alter functionality, operation, or consensus rules, and a chain lacking censorship resistance because a person or group can restrict or prohibit protocol use or user activity. The updated language includes a safe harbor giving teams a defined number of years to decentralize after launch.

Shapiro noted that corporate chains will struggle to meet the decentralization standard and that insider token sales on such chains will require much more disclosure and regulation. Layer 2 projects will need to ensure their security councils are narrowly scoped to avoid triggering the centralization classification. A commenter estimated only roughly 10 to 20 chains or protocols would avoid triggering any of the three flags, though Shapiro clarified those requirements are not yet in force and that after CLARITY passes new projects will craft capital-raising strategies around compliance from the start. Open questions remain about how multisig signer counts affect decentralization status, whether Hyperliquid would qualify, and there is a predicted meaningful chance the regulatory situation drags on another five to six years with messy court cases and subjective court-determined outcomes.

Collected Crypto is a platform on Solana that accepts physical trading cards, scans and tokenizes them, and allows peer-to-peer trading using USDC, with an overwhelming majority of transactions occurring in USDC. Its highest week on record was in late April at approximately 2.5 million dollars in revenue with roughly 60 percent gross margin, and its last week before recording was its third biggest by revenue. Daily active addresses run between approximately 350 and 500. The platform also operates a gacha system described as a digital vending machine dispensing Pokemon cards, which introduces a loot box gambling element.

Courtyard is the largest onchain physical collectibles platform by revenue according to a ZK Ape dashboard and runs on Polygon, covering Pokemon cards, sports cards, watches, and other real-world collectibles, with revenue described as moving up and to the right. Discussion of these platforms is occurring primarily in Pokemon and trading card communities rather than crypto-native circles, framing them as a meaningful onboarding pathway for non-crypto users. An attempt to assess whether platform trading volume is lifting physical card prices found the evidence inconclusive, with a price spike in at least one grade of a Mega Starmie card from late April but no broad price increase across cards, and Gengar prices staying exactly flat. The key unresolved question is whether crypto brings deeper liquidity to physical trading cards and whether that liquidity converts to higher prices across the board. High interest in onchain card trading could also lead participants to question why they need physical cards at all and shift toward pure digital art, which is framed as a potential catalyst for a broader NFT rally.