The German government continues to sell the 50,000 Bitcoins (BTC) it seized in an operation against the online film piracy platform Movie2K in January. Data from Arkham Intelligence reveals that the German government recently transferred a total of 2,700 BTC to centralized exchanges, B2C2 Group, and wallets linked to an OTC service address.
German Government Resumes Bitcoin Transfers
Today, around 10:00 AM CET, the German government resumed moving BTC and transferred 500 BTC worth approximately 28.63 million dollars to a wallet address believed to be an OTC service institutional deposit address “bc1qu…guzr4”. Shortly after this transfer, additional transfers were made to centralized exchanges, sending 400 BTC each to Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitstamp. Arkham also reported that the German government transferred 1,000 BTC to a wallet address associated with B2C2 Group.
Meanwhile, in the last 12 hours, the German government retrieved 4,169 BTC from centralized exchanges Bitstamp, Coinbase, and Kraken. On July 11, around 10:31 PM CET, Bitstamp returned approximately 994 BTC worth 57.12 million dollars to the German government. Following this, at 11:46 PM CET, another 574 BTC were returned, and two more transfers were made overnight, bringing the total amount of returned Bitcoin to over 1,627 BTC.
Kraken also returned 597.6 BTC to the German government from its hot wallet around the same time as Bitstamp’s first transfer. This was followed by another return of 363.5 BTC at 10:51 PM CET. Coinbase returned 311.8 BTC around 10:32 PM CET in the first batch and 451 BTC around 9:12 PM CET in the second batch.
The returned BTC were likely due to sales regulations preventing their sale, leading to a large amount of cryptocurrency being sent back to the German government.
How Much BTC Does the German Government Have Left?
Currently, the German government has 6,384 BTC worth 364.59 million dollars remaining from the 50,000 BTC seized in the Movie2K operation. Experts estimate that if the current selling trend continues, the German government will deplete its BTC holdings within a week.
