According to Cointelegraph, the German government recently missed out on an additional $124 million in profits by prematurely cashing out nearly 50,000 Bitcoin (BTC) holdings.
On July 13, the government of the German state of Saxony completed the sale of 49,858 BTC seized from the pirated movie website Movie2k, netting a total of approximately $2.87 billion. They made a profit of more than $740 million, compared with a value of $2.13 billion in January.
However, just after this government sale, the Bitcoin price subsequently increased by 16.55%. The market believes that Bitcoin's recent rise may be affected by the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, which increased his chances of winning the election in November.
Time for German Saxony government to sell Bitcoin (Source: Cointelegraph)
The Dresden prosecutor's office ordered an "emergency sale" of Bitcoin in June, estimating at the time that the value of Bitcoin was likely to fall by more than 10%.
"Prior to pending criminal proceedings, a sale is legally required when there is a risk of a significant loss of value of approximately 10% or more of an item of value," the Dresden prosecutor's office said in a statement published last week. "These conditions are always true for unstable Bitcoin due to large and extremely fast price fluctuations," the press release reads.
Additionally, the office emphasized that it is illegal for law enforcement agencies to speculate on the value of seized items, particularly by waiting for prices to increase before selling them. Instead, the purpose behind their emergency sale of 50,000 Bitcoins was to secure funding for criminal proceedings against movie2k.
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