German Government Prepares To Sell Another $900 Million In Bitcoin

The German government began preparing for its largest bitcoin sale to date on Monday, sending $900 million of the digital currency to trading venues.

On-chain data from Arkham Intelligence shows that over 16,000 BTC left the exchange’s wallet on July 8, leaving 23,787.7 BTC ($1.35 billion) remaining in its vaults.

Germany’s largest bitcoin sale

Arkham The flag was raised first. There are signs of continued selling at 8:32 a.m. ET on Monday.

The government sent 2,738.7 bitcoins ($155.3 million) to “potential exchanges and market makers,” including Kraken, Cumberland, an unidentified address and an address likely linked to an institutional or over-the-counter trading service, it said. Cumberland and the unidentified address were among the first recipients of government coins.

Less than two hours later, Arkam said Germany had Send another 8,100 BTC ($463.2 million) to exchanges like Kraken, Coinbase, and Bitstamp, including $200 million sent to Flow Traders — a proprietary trading firm and market maker.

Immediately after that tweet, the government announced: Additional 5200 BTC sent ($297.3M) to Coinbase, Bitstamp and OTC address.

“This makes this their biggest day yet — over 16,000 BTC in total,” Arkham wrote. “Less than half of the BTC originally seized from Movie2k still remains.”

Movie2k was a movie piracy site, and German police managed to seize 50,000 bitcoins in January of this year. Unlike their counterparts in the United States, which have seized larger amounts of bitcoin linked to criminal organizations, Germany is ditching its coins for fiat at a much faster rate, much to the chagrin of crypto bulls in 2024.

Bitcoin’s Scary Selloff Wave

Last week, Tron founder and billionaire Justin Sun offered to buy Germany’s remaining Bitcoin to ease the selling pressure in the market. A German parliamentarian also criticized the government’s approach, which recommended the government keep its coins as part of a diversified treasury rather than selling them all.

Concerns surrounding the German government’s sell-off — coupled with concerns surrounding Mt. Gox’s redistribution of bitcoin — have led to a market correction this month, sending bitcoin to its lowest levels since February.

While the asset has since recovered to over $56,000, digital asset trading firm QCP Capital expects BTC to face “weak performance” as the bankruptcy filing nears.