For weeks now, Germany’s authorities has been promoting a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} price of bitcoin — and it has been a key issue behind the cryptocurrency’s intense sell-off.

Final month, the German authorities started promoting bitcoin from a pockets operated by the nation’s Federal Prison Police Workplace, referred to domestically because the Bundeskriminalamt, or BKA.

The BKA offered 900 bitcoins in June — price roughly $52 million as of Monday — from an enormous haul seized from a now-defunct film piracy web site, in line with on-chain information tracked by blockchain analysis agency Arkham Intelligence.

Final week, the federal government offered a further 3,000 bitcoins price roughly $172 million. Then on Monday, German police offered an extra 2,739 bitcoins, or $155 million price of the cryptocurrency.

The federal government has been sending its crypto reserves to exchanges reminiscent of Coinbase, Bitstamp and Kraken.

The German authorities wasn’t instantly out there for a remark when contacted by CNBC on Monday.

In tandem with these gross sales, bitcoin has seen its price fall dramatically. Bitcoin sank under $55,000 on Friday, hitting its lowest degree since February 2024, in line with CoinGecko information.

At one level within the day, the whole crypto market had shed greater than $170 billion in mixed market capitalization in a 24-hour interval, CoinGecko’s information confirmed.

Germany’s bitcoin gross sales aren’t the one concern for crypto traders. The cryptocurrency has additionally been underneath strain from the payout of billions of {dollars}’ price of digital forex from the collapsed bitcoin alternate Mt. Gox — which went bankrupt in 2014 — to collectors.

On Friday, the trustee for the Mt. Gox chapter property, Nobuaki Kobayashi, mentioned it had begun making repayments in bitcoin and bitcoin money to among the collectors by means of a lot of designated crypto exchanges.

A whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} is some huge cash. However it’s a drop within the ocean when you have a look at bitcoin’s general token issuance.

There are round 19.7 million bitcoins in circulation at present, price $1.1 trillion, in line with CoinGecko information.

For traders, although, it is all about how these gross sales are impacting the temper available in the market.

James Butterfill, head of research at crypto asset supervisor CoinShares, instructed CNBC that, although “relatively minor,” the bitcoin gross sales have “affected market sentiment.”

Bitcoin’s price remains to be up a great 89% within the final 12 months.

In January 2024, police within the japanese German state of Saxony introduced the seizure of near 50,000 bitcoins, price round $2.2 billion on the time.

The haul was labeled by Saxony police as “the most extensive seizure of Bitcoins by law enforcement authorities in the Federal Republic of Germany to date.”

The funds have been seized from the operators of Movie2k.to, a film piracy web site that was lively in 2013, and transferred to a crypto pockets owned by Germany’s Federal Prison Police Workplace.

In line with Arkham Intelligence, which tracks actions from the German authorities’s bitcoin pockets, the tokens started shifting way back to 2013 once they have been initially seized.

Right this moment, Germany’s BKA holds roughly 32,488 bitcoins. At present costs, the federal government’s holdings are price roughly $1.9 billion.

Not everyone seems to be pleased with Germany’s resolution to promote its bitcoin holdings, although.

Joana Cotar, a member of the German Bundestag, which is the nation’s parliament, mentioned in a submit on X final month that, somewhat than promoting its bitcoin, the federal government ought to be holding the token as a “strategic reserve currency.”

Cotar mentioned she has written to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Finance Minister Christian Lindner and Saxony Minister President Michael Kretschmer to inform them promoting bitcoin “is not only not sensible, but counterproductive.”

She mentioned she’s invited the German officers to a lecture with Samson Mow, a outstanding bitcoin influencer, on Oct. 17 on the Paul-Lobe-Haus constructing in Berlin.