On July 12, a wallet linked to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) transferred 2,700 BTC worth $154.59 million to trading platforms.
The German Government started selling coins on July 12. At 15:02 UTC+8, it transferred a total of 1,200 BTC to Bitstamp, Kraken and Coinbase (400 BTC each), transferred 1,000 BTC to the suspected B2C2 Group: 139PoP…H7ybVu, transferred 500 BTC to the unmarked address: bc1qu3…guzr4j.…
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) July 12, 2024
A total of 1,200 BTC went to Bitstamp, Kraken, and Coinbase addresses; 1,000 BTC went to an address presumably linked to B2C2 Group, and 500 BTC went to an unmarked address.
An hour and a half later, 500 BTC from Kraken and Bitstamp returned to BKA.
On July 11, Arkham tracked 5,000 BTC being transferred to Flow Traders, Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp, and several other recipients, in addition to 5,627 BTC worth $328.89 million. The recipients of the latest transactions were Coinbase, Bitstamp, Kraken, Cumberland, B2C2, and an unidentified address.
UPDATE: The German government is running out of Bitcoin.
The German government just sent another 5,000 BTC ($286.44M) to Flow Traders, Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp, 139Po and bc1qu.
Today, they have transferred 10627 BTC ($615.33M) in total to market makers and exchanges.
They… https://t.co/vXtHwzUieK pic.twitter.com/4bOI56BJgN
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) July 11, 2024
The wallet originally held nearly 50,000 BTC that law enforcement officials seized from the administrators of the pirated movie site Movie2k in January. The cryptocurrency was seized by the Saxony police department, according to Lennart Ante, co-founder and CEO of Blockchain Research Lab.
Regional legislation provides for the liquidation of seized assets within a certain period. This is how the expert explained the authorities’ sales of bitcoins, which began with small amounts on June 19.
The BKA wallet contains 6894 BTC ($394.5 million) – 13.8% of the original amount.
Impact on the market
CryptoQuant Specialists recorded growth of stock exchange balances, but excluded the influence of the German authorities’ actions on the metric.
They cited increased trading activity by speculators as the reason. The latter were concerned about the distribution of bitcoins to Mt.Gox clients and sales from the BKA wallet, the analysts added.
Earlier, Bundestag member Joanna Kotar criticized the authorities’ sale of confiscated bitcoins and called these steps counterproductive.
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Source: Cryptocurrency
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