On June 26, Bitcoin wallets associated with the German government transferred 595.3 BTC, valued at approximately $36.65 million, to cryptocurrency trading platforms, according to data from Arkham.
Of this amount, 125 BTC each were sent to the cryptocurrency exchanges Bitstamp and Kraken. Following a test transaction of 0.001 BTC, a transfer of 345.3 BTC was made to the address of market maker Flow Traders.
Arkham specialists also noted a transaction of 500 BTC to a wallet whose ownership they had not identified at the time of writing.
Experts from the company speculate that these coins were seized by law enforcement in January from the administrators of the pirate movie site Movie2k. Initially, the wallets controlled by the Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany (BKA) held 50,000 BTC.
The authorities began actively moving cryptocurrency on June 19, when a portion was first sent to the Kraken and Bitstamp exchanges. The community linked potential asset sales to a “slight drop” in price.
On June 25, the BKA sent 200 BTC each to Coinbase and Kraken.
According to Arkham, the agency still holds 45,264 BTC valued at $2.78 billion.
In the last 24 hours, the price of Bitcoin has remained largely unchanged, trading at around $61,400, an increase of 0.5% (CoinGecko). However, amid the BKA’s transfers, there were dips in the rate to around $61,200.
In the United States, the government has faced accusations of “squandering” Bitcoin from the national reserve, which was supposed to exceed 400,000 BTC.