Christian’s journey with the written word began long before the age of Bitcoin. In the hallowed halls of academia, he honed his craft as a feature writer for his college paper. This early love for storytelling paved the way for a successful stint as an editor at a data engineering firm, where his first-month essay win funded a months-long supply of doggie and kitty treats – a testament to his dedication to his furry companions (more on that later).

Christian then roamed the world of journalism, working at newspapers in Canada and even South Korea. He finally settled down at a local news giant in his hometown in the Philippines for a decade, becoming a total news junkie. But then, something new caught his eye: cryptocurrency. It was like a treasure hunt mixed with storytelling – right up his alley!

So, he landed a killer gig at NewsBTC, where he’s one of the go-to guys for all things crypto. He breaks down this confusing stuff into bite-sized pieces, making it easy for anyone to understand (he salutes his management team for teaching him this skill).

Think Christian’s all work and no play? Not a chance! When he’s not at his computer, you’ll find him indulging his passion for motorbikes. A true gearhead, Christian loves tinkering with his bike and savoring the joy of the open road on his 320-cc Yamaha R3. Once a speed demon who hit 120mph (a feat he vowed never to repeat), he now prefers leisurely rides along the coast, enjoying the wind in his thinning hair.

Speaking of chill, Christian’s got a crew of furry friends waiting for him at home. Two cats and a dog. He swears cats are way smarter than dogs (sorry, Grizzly), but he adores them all anyway. Apparently, watching his pets just chillin’ helps him analyze and write meticulously formatted articles even better.

Here’s the thing about this guy: He works a lot, but he keeps himself fueled by enough coffee to make it through the day – and some seriously delicious (Filipino) food. He says a delectable meal is the secret ingredient to a killer article. And after a long day of crypto crusading, he unwinds with some rum (mixed with milk) while watching slapstick movies.

Looking ahead, Christian sees a bright future with NewsBTC. He says he sees himself privileged to be part of an awesome organization, sharing his expertise and passion with a community he values, and fellow editors – and bosses – he deeply respects.

So, the next time you tread into the world of cryptocurrency, remember the man behind the words – the crypto crusader, the grease monkey, and the feline philosopher, all rolled into one.

Bhutan has pledged up to 10,000 bitcoin — roughly $1 billion — to back the development of Gelephu Mindfulness City, a new special economic zone the crown is promoting as a hub for sustainable industry and jobs.

Reports have disclosed the allocation was announced on national day and framed as a long-term commitment to fund the city’s growth rather than a quick selloff of reserves.

King Announces Bitcoin Allocation

According to King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the pledge is meant “for our people, our youth, and our nation,” and aims to make every Bhutanese “a custodian, stakeholder, and beneficiary” of the project. The statement linked the Bitcoin allocation directly to the government’s plan to support economic opportunity inside Gelephu.

Bhutan and Cumberland DRW have signed a multi-year MoU to build a responsible digital asset ecosystem in Gelephu Mindfulness City, guided by the vision of His Majesty King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck.

The partnership focuses on sustainable digital asset infrastructure,… pic.twitter.com/IJR7t3oHYl

— gmcbhutan (@gmcbhutan) December 15, 2025

Plan For Digital Reserves

Based on reports, officials say the 10,000 BTC will be held with an eye toward preserving value while generating returns through careful, risk-managed strategies — not by liquidating the holdings immediately.

The government has also signed a multi-year memorandum of understanding with market maker Cumberland DRW to help build digital-asset infrastructure and explore reserve management, stablecoins, and renewable energy-based mining inside the zone.

Concept image of Bhutan's 'Mindfulness City." Source: GMC gallery

City Details And Goals

The Mindfulness City covers a very large area and has been pitched as an economic response to youth emigration, low birth rates, and lagging jobs.

Reports from earlier coverage describe the plan as a mix of green energy, tech, tourism, and regulated finance, with space set aside for vetted businesses and infrastructure projects such as an airport and dry port. the project’s promoters present it as a way to create higher-value work without abandoning Bhutan’s environmental and social aims.

Partnerships And Practical Steps

Officials say the partnership with Cumberland will focus on building market access and institutional-grade operations for the city’s crypto activities, including experimenting with a national stablecoin and sustainable mining tied to renewable power. Local leaders have sought legal and investment partners to give investors a clearer route into the zone’s projects.

Global Implications And Risks

Analysts note this is one of the larger sovereign moves toward using bitcoin as a development tool, and the pledge raises clear questions about governance, transparency, and the possible exposure of state coffers to crypto price swings.

Reports flag both opportunity and risk: the funds could underwrite major projects, but they also require careful oversight to avoid losses that would hurt public services.

Featured image from Visit Bhutan, chart from TradingView

Business leaders told KPMG—and its recently anointed chair and CEO, Timothy Walsh—that they’re wrestling with uncertainty across several different areas of their work. This is well documented and is to be expected, Walsh told Fortune in an interview. “There’s this general, as you would expect, general conversation around business uncertainty,” Walsh said, adding that he was encouraged at least to see the “alignment” in terms of topics coming up in C-suite conversations.

Peeling back the survey data, Walsh revealed that an unsurprisingly sizable majority (89%) say tariffs will “significantly impact” their business’ performance and operations over the coming three years. And nearly as many, 86%, said their firm will increase prices as needed. They are working hard to get around this, with 85% saying their company will strive to shift its sourcing strategies to minimize the impact as much as possible. The landscape is so uncertain that nearly every CEO says they need to make some kind of change: 79% said they’ve adapted their growth plans.

Walsh talked to Fortune about uncertainty on tariffs and AI, and the importance of trust in a climate of such uncertainty. CEOs are concerned with another advancing technology with terrifying capabilities, Walsh said: cyber and quantum. “That honestly keeps me up at night.”

Cybersecurity’s quantum challenge

Cybersecurity risks remain elevated, especially as quantum computing approaches. As for advances in quantum computing, Walsh said it could one day soon be capable of breaking all encryption, and companies tell him that they’re doing full assessments. It’s a “massive effort” to ensure that they’re not exposed when that quantum computing capability arrives, Walsh warned.

Adding into the mix the capabilities of AI agents and, Walsh said, “in many cases, a nation-state-type investment,” he’s very concerned about malware and deepfake-type technologies escalating in danger. Over the next three years, 82% of CEOs polled said cybercrime and cyber insecurity was a top trend that could hurt their organization. Cyber risk was overall the second-highest cited pressure behind CEOs’ short-term decisions. CEOs are most concerned about fraud detection and prevention (65%) and identity theft (52%), but they also said they have plans in place to mitigate.

All that being said, Walsh said CEOs are “feeling optimistic because they see so many growth opportunities.” The economy has been surprisingly strong despite all the uncertainty, the tech sector is driving a very strong stock market, and he even noted some “large deals and transactions” are coming through when it comes to M&A. “Capital flows are starting to move and [be] a bit more liquid.”

Tariffs and the AI element

Walsh told Fortune that tariffs are obviously the number-one thing on every CEO’s mind. And it’s not only the fact of tariffs but potential changes to tariffs, and “the uncertainty around whether those tariffs will continue to change.” There’s an overwhelming need for businesses to not only consider what will change but to get agile enough to work on their supply chains to be prepared for future, still uncertain, changes to come. To that end, 34% of CEOs said in the survey that supply chain resilience is the top pressure driving short-term decisions, followed by cyber security risks (29%) and global economic uncertainty (25%).

Walsh emphasized that tariffs are introducing a multi-dimensional challenge for CEOs. “The CEOs I speak with are addressing tariff impacts in three areas: cost take-out, supply chain optimization including reshoring, onshoring considerations, and ultimately pricing.” He said KPMG is actively working with clients in all of those areas and yes, AI is part of this transformation, too. The prominence of AI is another layer of uncertainty being added to the picture, but Walsh said it’s helping a lot of CEOs: “AI is not just an efficiency play, CEOs are focused on innovating their business models and introducing new revenue streams and products.”

The AI hourglass to come?

Walsh said AI capabilities are changing quickly, and he acknowledged that companies are starting to restructure in response. The survey found that CEOs “mostly see an hourglass shape” to their organizations in next three years, Walsh said, noting that’s typical with every new technology deployment. He added that “no one knows exactly where [workforce shape] is headed … It’s a challenge to forecast as AI advances rapidly.” In the survey, 35% said they are planning for workforce reductions in some areas over the next two to five years due to AI, and 69% see an hourglass with higher numbers of senior leaders and early-career workers and fewer in the middle (another 16% said a vertical triangle, 13% a triangle and 2% an inverted pyramid).

Managers are facing new responsibilities, managing teams with integrated AI agents, for instance. Walsh said some CEOs describe teams with both people and AI agents on them, “and managers of those teams have to ensure [that] agents complete steps in the workflow process, that agents have good data inputs so that their outputs can be relied upon, and continuously review those outputs.” CEOs surveyed said 86% of them see AI agents becoming embedded team members next year, and half think managers will be primarily responsible for managing AI agents’ performance as opposed to, say, HR or IT.

Walsh agreed with Fortune‘s reporting that “human skills” still matter as AI implementation shows the necessity of reviewing AI outputs. “Human skills are critically important,” Walsh said. Even though KPMG invests in and spends time upskilling its workers on AI and providing them with tools and licenses, he said he continues to remind leaders that “human-to-human relationships are critical … both internally and externally. Trust is more important than ever. Building trust with our teams, clients and ensuring we can trust outputs of technology like AI.” Given the uncertain climate, he added, trust is at a premium. The top change that CEOs see coming is retaining and re-training high-potential talent (75%), followed by redesigning roles to reflect AI collaboration (65%) and hiring AI-capable talent (64%).

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Indian markets ended flat in a special trading session for Budget on Saturday as investors saw little coming in from the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The benchmark Nifty slipped by a marginal 26 points at 23,318, while Sensex eked out a 5-point gain.

Analysts say the underlying trend of Nifty remains positive and the market is facing stiff resistance around 23,500-23,600 levels. “A decisive move above this hurdle could open further upside towards 24,000 levels in the near term. Immediate support is placed at 23,300 levels,” said Nagaraj Shetti of HDFC Securities.

Key factors that will shape the market direction this week:

1) Budget reaction

Even though the markets closed flat, the impact of Budget announcements will still be there during the week. Analysts say this will play out in sectoral and stock specific action. By doing away with tax on income up to Rs 12 lakh under the new tax regime, the government is looking to give a bump to consumption, which will be positive for FMCG, auto and few other sectors.

“FIIs participation was very minimal. Hence, the actual reaction is likely to be witnessed on Monday and hence, we need to wait for a day or two to understand whether the market has really discounted the Budget factor or not,” said Osho Krishnan, Sr. Analyst, Technical & Derivatives of – Angel One.

2) RBI policy

The rate-setting panel of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will meet later this week (Feb 5-7) and analysts widely believe the central bank is expected to usher in rate cuts, which will be the first in over four years.The central bank has injected massive liquidity into the banking system in recent days, which some economists take to mean a rate cut is imminent, despite relatively high inflation.According to a Reuters poll, over 70% of respondents forecast the RBI would cut its key repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.25% at the conclusion of its February meeting,

This will be the first monetary policy meeting chaired by Governor Sanjay Malhotra, a former civil servant appointed late last year.

3) Q3 earnings

As many as 748 companies will announce their quarterly earnings this week. Key results to watch out include from Asian Paints, Titan, Airtel, Power Grid, Divi’s Labs, Tata Power, Torrent Power, Info Edge, Swiggy, SBI, ITC, Trent, Britannia, LIC, M&M, NHPC, Oil India among others.

4) FII/DII activity

Foreign investors’ action will continue to be monitored by market participants as they have sold equity worth over Rs 70,000 crore in January.

5) Rupee, dollar movement

The rupee closed January on a flattish note as the support from positive domestic equities was negated by unabated foreign fund outflows and month-end dollar demand.

Analysts expect the rupee to trade with negative bias on strength in the US dollar and persistent FII outflows. “Uncertainty over tariffs by the US administration could pressure the rupee, but any central bank intervention may support the currency,” Choudhary said.

6) Global markets

US stocks closed lower on Friday as the S&P 500 dropped 4% in the last week, marking its biggest drop in four months. Big losses for chipmakers like Nvidia, Micron Technology and Broadcom weighed down the index.

Global investors will keep a close eye on the tariff chat from Donald Trump after the White House reaffirmed plans to introduce new tariffs against Mexico, Canada and China.

Analysts said the tariff talk in the afternoon injected a new wave of uncertainty. “We think it just kind of proved to be a bit of a trigger for people to take some money off the table going into the weekend.”

7) Technical levels

The Nifty has witnessed a roller-coaster ride during the Budget session. On the daily chart, analysts say a small-bodied candle has formed, indicating indecision.

“Nifty has support at 23,280, and as long as it remains above this level, the trend might stay positive. On the higher end, the index could move towards 23,700–24,000 in the short term. However, a fall below 23,280 might trigger panic in the market,” said Rupak De, Senior Technical Analyst at LKP Securities.

8) Crude Oil

Oil prices closed with losses last week as investors await the outcome of Trump’s tariff threats. President Donald Trump has threatened to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian and Mexican exports to the United States if those two countries do not clamp down on shipments of fentanyl and on illegal migration across US borders.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)

Ravi Kumar Jha, MD & CEO of LIC Mutual Fund AMC, exemplifies the synergy between wellness and leadership.

In this exclusive interview with ETMarkets, he shares how integrating practices like Neti, yoga, and meditation into his daily routine not only enhances his physical and mental well-being but also sharpens his decision-making and leadership abilities.

His holistic approach to health is a cornerstone of his professional success, inspiring a balanced and mindful leadership style.