From 40K BTC at the start of the week, to a mere 5K BTC at the time of writing, Germany's BKA has been selling off pretty much all of the 50K BTC seized during criminal investigations.
That's one, MT.Gox to go- and then, up we go again.
Market absorbing the coins nicely. Interesting to see if people are pulling forward buying because of the dip or if we still see strong demand after the German selling is over.
This is hilarious in some sense. A government having a Coinbase account. Will they pay tax? 🤣🤣Hope they have realized that Bitcoin is not worthless after all 🙂
TODAY: German Government selling up to 2700 BTC ($154.60M)
In the past hour, the German Government has sent 2700 BTC ($154.60M) to Kraken, Bitstamp, Coinbase, 139Po (likely institutional deposit/OTC service) and address bc1qu.
Since yesterday’s movements, the German Government received 4169 BTC ($239.62M) back from exchange addresses including Kraken, Bitstamp and Coinbase, and 500 BTC this morning. This is likely unsold BTC.
They now have 6894 BTC ($394.50M) remaining - that’s 13.8% of the Bitcoin originally seized from Movie2k.
These on-chain activities raise several questions:
Why move directly to CEX and sell on the spot market instead of OTC?
•Typically, organizations sell via OTC to avoid causing panic and creating a negative market impression. However, the German government chose to move directly to CEX, causing market panic and significant volatility.
Why withdraw BTC after moving to CEX?
•Interestingly, they also withdrew BTC from CEX after causing market turbulence, often following a price drop. This might indicate a realization that spot selling was not a good idea, prompting a shift to OTC sales. This seems plausible given the transfer of funds to Flow Traders and Cumberland, which usually handle OTC deals.
•However, the continued movement of funds to and from CEX suggests either an intent to create market panic or internal operational disorganization within the German government's departments handling the sell-off.
Why did the price drop so significantly given the relatively small sell-off compared to BTC's daily volume?
•The daily volume of BTC is around $36 billion, making the German government's sell-off comparatively small. The significant price drop is likely due to the psychological impact of on-chain movements on traders.
•Frequent news reports about the German government moving BTC to CEX contributed to market anxiety. Market makers might also be driving the price based on these news reports.
In conclusion, we believe this is a one-off event that will not affect the overall bullish trend of BTC in 2024. According to our latest AI model, we still predict that BTC will reach $100,000 by the end of this year, and such fluctuations are merely temporary
Not sure why, but I haven't seen any comparisons between Germany's current sale of BTC, and the 1999-2002 sale of national gold reserves by the UK/Gordon Brown (average sale price: $275 per ounce). Maybe it's ancient history for traders at this point. But in terms of outcomes, the potential parallels are striking.
After the UK sold its gold between 1999 and 2002 the price of Gold went up ~600%
Germany selling billions in #Bitcoin will become an even bigger regret.
Kudos.