Hey folks.
The government of Germany for weeks now has been selling bitcoin worth hundreds of millions of dollars - and this has been an important factor behind the crypto's enormous sell-off.
The German government started selling Bitcoin last month from a wallet operated by Federal Criminal Police Office of the country, locally referred to as the Bundeskriminalamt, or BKA.
In June, the Bundeskriminalamt sold 900 bitcoins which was worth approximately $54 million as of Monday. Additionally, last week the government sold 3,000 bitcoin valued roughly $172 million. Then further on Monday, the German police sold 2,739 bitcoins or $155 million worth of the crypto.
The German government has been sending its crypto reserves to crypto exchanges such Coinbase, Kraken and Bitstamp.
These sales have resulted in a sharp decline in the price of bitcoin. According to CoinGecko data, the price of bitcoin fell below $55,000 on Friday, reaching its lowest point since February 2024.
According to CoinGecko's data, at one point throughout the day, the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrency markets had dropped by more than $170 billion in a single day.
The Bitcoin sales by Germany are not the only worry for crypto investors. The crypto has also been under pressure from the payout from the collapsed bitcoin exchange MT.Gox which are in billions of dollars. The exchange went bankrupt in 2014 - to creditors.
Nobuaki Kobayashi, the trustee for the Mt. Gox bankruptcy estate, announced on Friday that the estate had started paying some of its creditors back in bitcoin and bitcoin cash via a number of approved cryptocurrency exchanges.
A large sum of money is hundreds of millions of dollars. However, when considering the total amount of tokens issued by bitcoin, it's minuscule.
According to data by CoinGecko, there are around 19.7 million bitcoins in circulation today which are worth $1.1 trillion. For investors, it is all about how these sales are affecting the mood in the market.
Follow @haveyoursay
x.com/itshaveyoursay
Posted Using InLeo Alpha