Recently, the entire cryptocurrency market was analyzing the composition of a bitcoin wallet that belonged to the authorities of Germany (specifically: Saxony). The point was that our western neighbors decided to sell bitcoins that they had seized from an illegal platform with pirated movies.
German authorities sell bitcoins
Internet pirates had large resources – as much as 50,000 BTC. This number of bitcoins was worth about USD 2.87 billion at the time of sale. At the time of seizure of this treasure, the value was lower – USD 2.13 billion. The German government completed its sale on July 13. It received this first amount. So it was in the black about USD 740 million.
Not a bad result. Except that it could have been higher by $124 million. If only the German services had not approached the matter in a – to put it mildly – unprofessional manner…
What exactly is it about? That there was a lot of noise around the sale of “German” coins on major exchanges. The media hype fueled the declines in the BTC price. And that’s why the Germans didn’t get as much for the confiscated cryptocurrencies as they could have. Almost immediately after they sold the bitcoins, the price soared by over 16% in a short time. And hence the reduction in potential earnings.
“Emergency sale”
But why did the German services decide to approach the matter in such a strange way? They could have sold bitcoins outside of exchanges. Justin Sun from Tron offered to do so.
I am willing to negotiate with the German government to buy all BTC off the market to minimize the impact on the rate
– he wrote on X.
This would be more beneficial for the authorities. They would receive more money for “their” bitcoins than if they “dumped” them on exchanges, thus lowering the rate.
However, the Dresden prosecutor’s office took a different decision. In June, it ordered an “emergency sale” of bitcoins. It was assumed that the cryptocurrency’s price would soon fall.
The sale of valuables before the conclusion of ongoing criminal proceedings is required by law whenever there is a risk of significant loss in value of approximately ten percent or more
– officials explained.
These conditions are always met in the case of an unstable (rate) bitcoin
– they added.
In addition, the prosecutor’s office emphasized that speculation by enforcement bodies on the stock exchange is illegal. In other words, the office can never hold a given security seized from criminals in the hope that its value will increase.
And that alone should explain the rather strange decision of Germany. It was not about deliberately lowering the BTC rate, but about procedures and regulations.
