Germany has once again transferred 282.74 BTC, valued at $17.6 million, to the cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase, Bitstamp, and Kraken. This has sparked speculation about the possibility of the German government selling off its Bitcoin assets.
The transfers were identified by the on-chain analytics provider Arkham, which has been closely monitoring Bitcoin movements from addresses associated with the German government. This latest move comes after a series of Bitcoin transfers initiated by the German government in the past few weeks.
The significant Bitcoin stockpile, worth approximately $3 billion, was seized from Movie2k.to, a movie piracy website. In January, German police confiscated 50,000 BTC from the website, marking it as the largest seizure of Bitcoins by law enforcement authorities in Germany to date.
According to Arkham’s data, on July 2, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) sent 100 BTC to Coinbase, 150 BTC to Bitstamp, and 32.74 BTC to Kraken. Additionally, 550 BTC were sent to an address labeled as “139Po,” which Arkham has yet to identify but suspects could belong to an exchange. In total, the German government has now transferred approximately $193 million worth of seized bitcoin to known exchange addresses. Furthermore, an additional $251 million has been sent to the “139Po” address.
These latest figures come after the government sent 200 BTC to Bitstamp, 100 BTC to Coinbase, and 100 BTC to Kraken on July 1, along with 1,100 BTC to the “139Po” address. Prior to that, it received 310 BTC from Kraken on June 20 and an additional 90 BTC from wallets linked to Robinhood, Bitstamp, and Coinbase.
As of now, the German government holds approximately 43,859 BTC, valued at around $2.7 billion based on current prices. This makes Germany one of the largest known nation-state holders of Bitcoin, following the United States, China, and the UK.
Despite the recent transfers, the price of Bitcoin remains flat at around $62,739. However, analysts from QCP Capital suggest that both Bitcoin and Ether historically perform well in July due to positive seasonality, with BTC having a median return of 9.6% in July.