Bitcoin
Germany Has $2 Billion in Bitcoin (BTC). It’s Scaring Investors
Bitcoin is also under selling pressure from the German government, as well as from the collapsed bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox.
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For weeks now, the German government has been selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoin — and that has been a key factor behind the cryptocurrency’s massive sell-off.
Last month, the German government began selling bitcoins from a wallet operated by the country’s Federal Criminal Police, known locally as the Bundeskriminalamt, or BKA.
The BKA sold 900 bitcoins in June — valued at approximately $52 million as of Monday — from a massive seizure from a now-defunct movie piracy website, according to on-chain data tracked by blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence.
Last week, the government sold another 3,000 bitcoins worth approximately $172 million. Then, on Monday, German police sold another 2,739 bitcoinsor $155 million in cryptocurrencies.
The government has been sending its cryptocurrency reserves to exchanges like CoinbaseBitstamp and Kraken.
The German government was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC on Monday.
Bitcoin Price Reaction
In parallel with these sales, bitcoin saw its price fall dramatically. Bitcoin sank below $55,000 on Friday, hitting its lowest level since February 2024, according to data from CoinGecko.
At one point in the day, the entire cryptocurrency market lost more than $170 billion in combined market capitalization in a 24-hour period, data from CoinGecko showed.
Bitcoin sales in Germany are not the only concern for crypto investors. The cryptocurrency is also under pressure due to the payment of billions of dollars in digital currency by the Bitcoin Exchange Mt. Gox Collapse — which went bankrupt in 2014 — to creditors.
On Friday, Mt. Gox bankruptcy trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi said the company had begun making payments in bitcoin and bitcoin cash to some of its creditors through several designated cryptocurrency exchanges.
Hundreds of millions of dollars is a lot of money. But it’s a drop in the ocean when you look at the overall issuance of bitcoin tokens.
There are about 19.7 million bitcoins in circulation today, worth $1.1 trillion, according to data from CoinGecko.
For investors, however, what matters is how these sales are impacting the market climate.
James Butterfill, head of research at crypto asset manager CoinShares, told CNBC that while “relatively small,” the bitcoin selloffs “did affect market sentiment.”
The price of Bitcoin is still up a good 89% in the last 12 months.
Why Germany Has $2 Billion in Bitcoin
In January 2024, police in the eastern German state of Saxony announced the seizure of around 50,000 bitcoins, valued at around $2.2 billion at the time.
The seizure was labeled by Saxony police as “the largest seizure of Bitcoins by law enforcement authorities in the Federal Republic of Germany to date.”
The funds were seized from the operators of Movie2k.to, a movie piracy website active in 2013, and transferred to a cryptocurrency wallet owned by Germany’s Federal Criminal Police.
According to Arkham Intelligence, which tracks the movements of the German government’s bitcoin wallet, the tokens began moving in 2013, when they were originally seized.
Today, Germany’s BKA holds approximately 32,488 bitcoins. At current prices, the government’s holdings are worth approximately $1.9 billion.
But not everyone is happy with Germany’s decision to sell its bitcoin holdings.
Joana Cotar, a member of the German Bundestag, which is the country’s parliament, said in a post on X last month that instead of selling its bitcoin, the government should hold the token as a “strategic reserve currency.”
Cotar said he wrote to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Finance Minister Christian Lindner and Saxony’s Minister-President Michael Kretschmer to tell them that selling bitcoin “is not only unwise, but counterproductive.”
She said she invited German officials to a talk by Samson Mow, a prominent bitcoin influencer, on Oct. 17 at the Paul-Lobe-Haus building in Berlin.
Bitcoin has lost out on an asset rally fueled by positive comments from the Federal Reserve, while a tight US election race casts doubt on whether Donald Trump will get the chance to implement his pro-crypto agenda.
The digital asset fell 2.4% on Wednesday, following a Fed-fueled surge in an index of megacap tech stocks Magnificent Seven by one of the largest margins in 2024. The token retreated further on Thursday, changing hands at $63,750 as of 6:10 a.m. in London.
Bitcoin
‘This is huge’ — Billionaire Mark Cuban issues ‘incredible’ Bitcoin and crypto prediction amid price slump
Bitcoin
Bitcoin
came back with a vengeance this year when former President Donald Trump Cryptocurrency boosts US presidential election in November with ‘revolutionary’ plan.
The price of bitcoin has surged to more than its all-time high in recent months, surpassing $70,000 per bitcoin and triggering a wave of mega-optimistic predictions about the price of bitcointhough it fell again this week, falling below $65,000 after the Federal Reserve kept interest rates steady.
Now, as Elon Musk suddenly breaks his silence on bitcoin and cryptocurrenciesBillionaire investor Mark Cuban called a California plan to digitize 42 million car titles using blockchain an “incredible step forward” and “huge” for cryptocurrencies.
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Mark Cuban, famous Shark Tank investor and billionaire owner of the NBA team Dallas Mavericks, has… [+] called a cryptocurrency update “amazing” amid bitcoin’s price slump.
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The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has digitized 42 million car titles using blockchain, it was reported by Reuters, through technology company Oxhead Alpha on the Avalanche blockchain and designed to detect fraud and facilitate the securities transfer process.
“This is an incredible development for crypto,” Cuban, best known as an investor on TV’s Shark Tank and owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team, posted on X, joking that U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler could sue the state as part of his hostility toward cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
“The reason this is huge for crypto is because people who hold the tokens will have an app with an Avalanche wallet,” Cuban said. “Tens of millions of Californians having and using a crypto wallet in the next five years, or however long it takes, normalizes the use of wallets and crypto.”
John Wu, president of Avalanche developer Ava Labs, told Reuters that California’s DMV is “creating a wallet that you can download on your phone.”
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Bitcoin’s price has rallied this year, triggering a wave of bullish bitcoin price predictions from… [+] people like billionaire Mark Cuban.
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Last month, Cuban predicted that if the US dollar falls as the global reserve currency, bitcoin could become “a global ‘safe haven’” and a “global currency.” potentially sending the price of bitcoin to a much higher level.
According to Cuban, bitcoin could become what its most ardent supporters “envision” — a means “of protecting our economies… This is already happening in countries facing hyperinflation.”
The price of bitcoin has skyrocketed over the past year, largely due to the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, leading a bitcoin attack on Wall Street.
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Bitcoin (BTC) miner Riot Platforms (RIOT)’s second-quarter loss widens to $84.4 million as costs rise
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At a national bitcoin conference in Nashville, Donald Trump finally laid out some of his crypto policy proposals, including a long-awaited part of his plan — building a strategic bitcoin reserve. CNN’s Jon Sarlin explains what it is and why the crypto industry wants it.
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