Bhutan’s haul derives from a more wholesome source. The Himalayan kingdom mines its own coins, harnessing rivers to power the computers. There is a nice circularity to this. Exporting hydropower would be expensive and inevitably require new infrastructure, not all of which would necessarily be aesthetically pleasing. So instead Bhutan monetises the energy — turning gigawatts into money — by mining bitcoin at home. That’s helpful for a country with few wealth-generating levers at its disposal; it imports nearly everything and manufacturing is a non-starter.

Buyers in the wake of the coin’s Trump bump include Saudi Arabia, traders reckon. El Salvador, undeterred by the strings attached to a pending IMF bailout, continued to buy bitcoin last month.

One reason is that old-school currency reserves are also becoming riskier. See, for instance, speculation that the US might pursue a so-called Mar-a-Lago accord to weaken the dollar. Should a new monetary system come about, that might just create a space for an alternative like bitcoin.