The German Federal Criminal Office, or Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), moved another $362 million in bitcoin on July 9, leaving it with $1.3 billion worth of assets, which it will most likely liquidate until the last Satoshi.
Arkham Intelligence brought attention to BKA’s wallet activity, posting on X, “TODAY: German Government selling up to 6306.9 BTC ($362.12M).” It added, “In the past 3 hours, the German Government has sent 6306.9 BTC ($362.12M) to Kraken, Cumberland, 139Po (likely institutional deposit/OTC service) and address bc1qu.” Arkham’s X account also noted how quickly the government moved its holdings, iterating, “Of this, 3206.9 BTC ($184.58M) has been sent within the past 20 minutes.”
Bitcoin’s price has dwindled in the past month due to BKA’s wallet offloading its holdings to the market, often in millions, adding selling pressure. As a result, bitcoin’s prices dropped to below the $60,000 mark a few days ago and remained there. With this wallet selling, bitcoin’s price is expected to fall further. However, July has been a great month for bitcoin holders — the asset has consistently registered about 9% gains over the past few years.
The BKA-labelled wallet moved $55 million to Kraken and $6 million to Cumberland, a liquidity provider out of Chicago. Another 5,000 bitcoins, or $287.07 million, was sent to an unlabelled wallet, 139PoPE1bKQam8QJjhVjYDP47f3VH7ybVu, most probably an OTC institutional service, according to Arkham. While those transfers mark the assets moved out of the BKA’s wallet, it also received 1,700 bitcoins from Bitstamp and over 1,900 bitcoins from Kraken.
The German government’s move of these asset bulks caused bitcoin’s price to face tremendous resistance in June. Early July saw bitcoin plummet to below $60,000. That came in the wake of the wallet moving $172 million in bitcoin and Mt. Gox commencing its repayment process. A German legislator has also urged the government to hold the assets to diversify its reserves.
