Last weekend, the German government reduced its Bitcoin reserves by 1,400 BTC, bringing its total reserves down from 41,226 BTC to 39,826 BTC.
According to recent data from Arkham Intelligence, the wallet address marked as "German Government" once again transferred 250 BTC to Coinbase and Bitstamp respectively, and another 500 BTC to the address starting with 139PoPE1b, for a total of 1,000 BTC this time. The recent transfer amount is approximately $80.12 million. Prior to this, the wallet had received deposits totaling approximately 1,915 BTC. The reduction in holdings has unsettled the cryptocurrency community and has affected market sentiment in recent weeks.
Joana Cotar, an independent member of the German Parliament, recently urged the government to stop liquidating Bitcoin holdings. Cryptocurrency supporter Cotar believes that Bitcoin can be used as an inflation hedge to promote economic sovereignty and innovation. Despite her belief, the government has continued its sell-off.
Lookonchain estimates that the German government has liquidated $819 million worth of Bitcoin. It still holds about $2.3 billion worth of Bitcoin, which indicates that the market may face continued selling pressure.
The German government transferred up to 2,800 Bitcoins to three decentralized exchanges, Coinbase, Bitstamp, and Kraken, on July 1 and July 2, respectively.
In total, the German government has transferred more than 3,000 Bitcoins to decentralized exchanges (CEX) since the past two weeks.
It is worth noting that part of the transferred funds (about 1,341.90 BTC) are now located in a new Bech32 segregated witness address. The address has recorded seven transactions and currently holds assets worth $76,589,498. Transactions involving the wallet involved platforms such as Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp, and Flow Traders, indicating business with over-the-counter (OTC) traders or market makers.
Germany’s Bitcoin wealth stemmed from the seizure of 50,000 Bitcoins from Movie2k.to, a website that aggregated pirated media content. At its peak, Movie2k.to was one of the most popular websites in Germany, surpassing even Twitter. The site was shut down in May 2013 after efforts by major film studios, and German authorities eventually confiscated 50,000 Bitcoins from one of the operators of the notorious site.
The German government’s continued liquidation of Bitcoin has increased volatility and uncertainty in the cryptocurrency market. This trend, along with other major Bitcoin moves by the government, continues to influence market dynamics.
Meanwhile, Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, was hacked in 2014 and lost 850,000 Bitcoins. After nearly a decade of bankruptcy proceedings, the restitution process began in July and is expected to end in October. The exchange will repay 142,000 BTC and 143,000 BCH to creditors.
According to Arkham, on July 5, Mt. Gox transferred 47,229 BTC (worth $2.71 billion) from its cold wallets. Of this, 1,544.7 BTC ($84.9 million) was sent to the exchange Bitbank, and another 1,157.1 BTC was sent to an unknown address, possibly another repayment exchange.
The price of Bitcoin has also experienced a drop of about 2.5% in the past 24 hours, and Bitcoin is currently trading at around $55,600.
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