How one author found Mongolian herders trading crypto and microchipping camels

It’s been two days since we left the glittering skyscrapers and flashy hotels of downtown Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital, and began our journey to the northeastern Khentii province — the birthplace of Chinggis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries, the largest contiguous empire in history.

In the distance, nomadic gers stand out like white dots in the vast rolling grassland. The sun is about to set when we reach our destination, the home of a nomadic herder family. Standing outside their ger, the steppe seems to stretch endlessly in all directions, making the world feel bigger but also somehow simpler. It’s only now that I feel I truly understand what they mean by the ‘endless blue sky’, a common epithet for the landlocked Northeast Asian nation.

We feast at the family home on one of the country’s most distinct and tasty dishes: khorkhog, or mutton cooked using hot rocks. This comes served with pickled cucumber, a variety of berries, and curdled milk — besides more plates of meat, all from the family’s own livestock. A bowl of vodka is passed around to share and constantly topped up.

Many of the livestock are implanted with microchips that can be monitored via satellite-based services.Batbayer’s ger has a TV, a satellite dish and some digital devices, powered using solar panels and a diesel generator, clear signs that technological transitions are afoot in the daily lives of Mongolia’s nomads. The sight of herders, on horses or camels, accessing the web or trading crypto via their smartphones is no longer as incongruous as it might sound.

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