The German government appeared to send a further 400 BTC ($24.34 million) to Coinbase and Kraken on Tuesday, according to Arkham.
The government-labeled addresses began sending assets to crypto exchanges last week following the seizure of 50,000 BTC from piracy site Movie2k in January.
($24.34 million) to Coinbase and Kraken Tuesday morning, indicating a potential intention to sell the assets and following substantial transfers of its seized bitcoin last week, according to on-chain analytics provider Arkham.
“They have also moved 500 BTC ($30.4 million) to address 139Po. We have yet to see where these funds are moved” Arkham posted on X.
“This is in addition to $130 million BTC sent to exchanges on 19th June and $65 million BTC sent on 20th June, although they received $20.1 million back from Kraken and $5.5 million from wallets linked to Robinhood, Bitstamp and Coinbase,” the firm added
Meanwhile, German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) sent 200 BTC ($12.17 million) to each crypto exchange at around 7:38 a.m. UTC, the blockchain analytics platform’s data shows.
The German government currently holds 46,359 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.
German authorities seized 50,000 BTC connected to the film piracy operation Movie2k in January. The seizure became the largest amount of bitcoin German law enforcement has ever seized, according to a police statement at the time.
The suspects voluntarily transferred the bitcoin to wallets controlled by German authorities, but it was unclear what law enforcement would do with the funds.
On June 18, addresses labeled by Arkham as belonging to the German government began making small apparent internal test transactions, before making further likely test transactions of 0.001 BTC ($60) to Bitstamp, Kraken and Coinbase-labeled addresses, as well as the unlabeled “139Po” address.
On June 19, a government-labeled address then moved a substantial $425 million worth of bitcoin to another address it owned, followed by further $318 million internal transfer. It then sent 500 BTC ($32.6 million) each to Kraken, Bitstamp and Coinbase the same day, according to Arkham data, as well as a further 500 BTC to the “139Po” address.
Another 800 BTC ($52.7 million) was sent to the “139Po” address on June 20, followed by 200 BTC ($13.2 million) sent to Coinbase. However, the German government then appeared to receive back 310 BTC ($20.1 million) from Kraken on the same day. 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.
Bitcoin is currently trading for $61,285, 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.