According to data from Arkham Intelligence, the wallet of the German government has run out of Bitcoins to send to the exchanges.
BREAKING: The German Government is now out of Bitcoin.
The German Government just sent 3846.05 BTC ($223.81M) to Flow Traders and 139Po (likely institutional deposit/OTC service).
The German Government has 0 BTC ($0.00M) remaining. pic.twitter.com/R2vfylR1b2
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) July 12, 2024
In total over the course of the days, he sent 50,000 BTC to the exchanges, where he most likely sold them.
The confiscation of BTC from Movie2K
Some time ago, the German Land of Saxony had confiscated 50,000 Bitcoin from the movie piracy website Movie2K.
According to the data from Arkham Intelligence, these 50,000 BTC arrived in the wallet of the German government authorities on January 17 of this year, and starting from June 20, their movement towards the exchanges began.
The Movie2k portal was shut down as early as 2013, but only this year did the FBI and German police gain access to those funds in Bitcoin belonging to the operators of the platform.
Note that Movie2K from 2008 to 2013 was the largest pirate movie portal in German-speaking countries, even if 50,000 BTC in 2013 were worth at most 50 million dollars.
When they were seized, at the beginning of 2024, they were worth more than two billion dollars, and if they were sold at an average price above $57,000 in total the German authorities should have collected more than 2.8 billion dollars.
The confiscation was considered a record for the value in dollars at the time of the confiscation, even though there have been other cases in the past of larger confiscations in criptovalute.
Germany: the reason for the sale of all Bitcoins in wallets on exchanges
In cases like these, the authorities tend to sell the confiscated assets as soon as possible in order to collect fiat currency.
Therefore, it should not be surprising that only a few months after the confiscation they have probably already proceeded with the sale of all 50,000 BTC confiscated.
Generally, it is the judicial authorities who decide and impose the timelines, and the competent authorities at that point must execute what is ordered by the tribunals.
Furthermore, not only was the sale probably carried out in these weeks because it was ordered by a court, but given that those BTC were confiscated when they were worth 2.1 billion on the market, if the proceeds had actually been 2.8 billion, the government authorities would have profited.
The trolls
The curious thing, however, is that now on that wallet there are about 0.006 BTC.
In fact, since the address is known, some trolls have started sending small amounts in Bitcoin often accompanied by a comment.
For example, a user sent $1.87 in BTC accompanied by the message “HFSP German government”.
After the German sold ALL their bitcoin somebody sent them $1.87 #Bitcoin and inscribed the message “HFSP German government” 
pic.twitter.com/MQr93xo6YJ
— Bitcoin Archive (@BTC_Archive) July 13, 2024
HFSP is an acronym that stands for Have Fun Staying Poor, a phrase that means have fun and stay poor.
The troll with this phrase wanted to suggest to the German authorities that if you sell Bitcoin you might lose the opportunity to earn much more by keeping them in the portfolio for the long term.
It must be said, however, that, on the one hand, there is actually no certainty that one can earn more by waiting years to sell them, and on the other hand, the German authorities very likely had no choice.
The sale of confiscated assets to collect fiat currency is the norm in case of confiscation, and the timing is generally dictated by the courts. This implies that most likely the German authorities had no choice, and once the sale was decided and authorized, they had to execute it without delay.
Germania wallet: the impact on the price of Bitcoin during the sale on exchanges
Although the transfers of the 50,000 BTC from Germany to the exchanges started on June 20, initially they were few and slow. They intensified starting from July 9.
Moreover, the news of the mass sale of these Bitcoin started to spread a few days earlier.
In any case, on June 24th, a first drop in the price of BTC began, falling in a single day from $64,000 to less than $59,000.
A second significant drop occurred between July 3 and 5, that is, before Germany’s wallet began transferring the bulk of its Bitcoin to the exchanges. At that point, the price had fallen below $54,000, but just two days later it had risen above $57,000.
Between July 8 and 9, there was another drop below $55,000, but on Saturday the 13th, the transfers of Bitcoin from Germany to the exchanges ended because the BTC in their wallet were exhausted.
The following day the price of Bitcoin had risen to $59,000, and after a brief return below $57,000, in the last two days it rose first above $60,000 and then also above $62,000.
The other liquidations
The problem is that there should be another liquidation of BTC soon, even bigger.
It concerns the 142,000 BTC of Mt. Gox, of which almost 3,000 have already been liquidated.
Mt. Gox is a failed crypto exchange from 2014, and now it is returning to its former users part of the BTC they had deposited with them.
The interesting thing is that Mt. Gox will sell only a small part of those Bitcoin, because the majority will simply be given back to the former users of the exchange.
However, these latter could also decide to sell them, but after 10 years of waiting they could also decide to keep them for another 10 years, given that in this period of time they have revalued by 6,000%.
