German police said the seizure was the largest in the country's history.
German authorities successfully confiscated 50,000 Bitcoins worth $2.17 billion from a pirated website in mid-January, according to a Jan. 30 statement from Saxony State Police.
The seizure is linked to an ongoing investigation into the alleged unauthorized commercial exploitation of copyrighted works under the Copyright Act and subsequent commercial money laundering. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and an undisclosed IT company from Munich are cooperating in the investigation.
According to authorities, two unnamed suspects have been identified, including a 40-year-old German man and a 37-year-old Polish man. One of them voluntarily transferred the flagship digital asset to the address provided by the BKA.
Meanwhile, this marks the largest asset seizure by German police, and authorities have yet to determine how the seized Bitcoin will be used.
It is worth noting that this is not the first time that German authorities have confiscated Bitcoin. In 2022, they seized the top digital asset worth about €23 million after dismantling the server infrastructure of the illegal darknet market Hydra.
Similarly, the U.S. government has also made large seizures of top cryptocurrencies. In recent years, more than 50,000 BTC, worth $3.6 billion, linked to the defunct darknet marketplace Silk Road was seized from James Zhu.
The United States has also been actively divesting its Bitcoin holdings. On January 25, the government revealed plans to sell $130 million in the cryptocurrency.
Despite this selling activity, data from the Arkham Intelligence platform shows that the U.S. government still holds more than 216,000 units of BTC, worth $9.56 billion, at press time. #德国 #比特币
