🏛️ The German government suddenly transfers 6,500 #Bitcoins : what happened?

🔶 Currently, Germany is among the largest Bitcoin holders in the world with a reserve of around 50,000, which places it in 4th position behind the United States and China.

🔶 At the origin of this significant loot is the illegal streaming platform Movie2k. The site's operators are said to have invested heavily in Bitcoin starting in 2013, using revenue from advertisements and subscriptions.

🔶 But in 2020, the German authorities intervened by closing the website and arresting several suspects. In concert with the tax authorities and the prosecutor, it was in 2024 that the Saxony criminal police finalized this seizure, thus pocketing nearly 50,000 BTC.

🔶 It is quite common for governments to seize #cryptomonnaies as part of investigations into criminal networks. The government in question can subsequently use this seizure to transform these digital assets into commodity currencies, to replenish public accounts for example.

🔶 This entire transfer was made to a new public address, still unknown to the public (step 1). An additional 2,359 BTC went to addresses affiliated with the German government (step 2).

🔶 Subsequently, these 2,500 Bitcoins were redistributed to several exchanges including Kraken, Bitstamp and Coinbase, but also to an unknown address (step 3).

🔶 In sum, the main #wallet still holds 47,179 Bitcoins, worth over $3 billion at the time of writing. Ultimately, only 1,700 BTC was sent to cryptocurrency exchanges, an amount that does not appear to have been converted into traditional currencies at this time.