German government sends another $15 million in bitcoin to Bitstamp and Kraken: Arkham

Crypto addresses labeled as belonging to German authorities appeared to send another 250 BTC +0.052% ($15.4 million) to exchanges Bitstamp and Kraken on Wednesday morning — indicating a potential intention to sell the assets — according to on-chain analytics provider Arkham.

The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) sent 125 BTC ($7.7 million) to each crypto exchange at around 7:52 a.m. UTC, the blockchain analytics platform's data show. Additionally, it sent 500 BTC ($30.9 million) at the same time to the address “139Po,” per Arkham’s data. The platform has yet to identify that address, but it could also belong to an exchange.

“The German Government also transferred 0.001 BTC to [market maker] Flow Traders, which may be a test transaction and will sell BTC through Flow Traders,” fellow analytics firm Lookonchain pointed out on X.

50,000 BTC seized

The German government-labeled addresses began sending bitcoin to crypto exchanges last week following the seizure of 50,000 BTC from the film-piracy site Movie2k in January.

On Tuesday, the German government sent a total of 400 BTC ($24.3 million) to Coinbase and Kraken, alongside 500 BTC ($30.4 million) to the “139Po” address. That followed a series of transfers that began last week. Overall, approximately $150 million worth of the seized bitcoin has now been transferred by the German government to addresses labeled as belonging to crypto exchanges, with a further $147 million sent to the “139Po” address.

However, the German government appeared to receive back 310 BTC ($20.1 million) from Kraken last week. It also received a total of 90 BTC ($5.5 million) since June 20 from wallets linked to Robinhood, Bitstamp and Coinbase, according to Arkham.

The German government currently holds 45,609 BTC, worth around $2.8 billion at current prices, per Arkham data. Germany is among the largest known nation-state holders of bitcoin behind the United States, China and the UK with 213,246 BTC, 190,000 BTC and 61,000 BTC, respectively, according to Bitcoin Treasuries .

Bitcoin is currently trading for $61,384, according to The Block’s bitcoin price page . The largest cryptocurrency by market cap is down around 6% since the German government began moving funds to exchanges last week.

Bitcoin briefly fell below $60,000 on Monday following the news that defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox is set to  distribute  around $9 billion worth of bitcoin and bitcoin cash repayments from July.