There are ongoing rumors that the United States government has just parted with 9800 Bitcoin (BTC) in a sale that reportedly raked in $277 million. The supposedly sudden release of that quantity of BTC in the crypto space caused the value of the coin to begin its depreciation and is currently trading at $27,687.83 down by a marginal gain of 0.84%.
Before the U.S. government sold the BTC, the price of the digital currency shot up beyond $28,000.
By the rumors, the U.S. government will still have a total of over 200,000 BTC. However, if the decision to sell this massive BTC in the long run is reached, it may cause the price of Bitcoin to plunge further down to less than $10,000. Such huge BTC sales usually causes mixed directions amongst crypto enthusiasts especially those who holds a significant percentage of the coin.
This time around, several responses to the WhaleWire tweet indicates that the Bitcoin sales, if true, will be a welcome development. In the mean time, BTC is still taking a bullish stance and has a medium level of volatility based on today’s price analysis.
U.S. Government Selling Confiscated BTC
This happens to be the second time the government is selling this same quantity of BTC. As per a screenshot shared by WhaleWire on Twitter, three weeks ago, the U.S. government sold 9800 BTC.
All of these cryptocurrencies were seized in what the government called criminal operations. In November 2022, about 50,000 BTC were confiscated from crypto criminal James Zhong. Notably, this was not the first time that such an incident is happening. Way back in 2014, the federal government also sold off 30,000 BTC which it secured from the same source.
At the time, American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase was tapped as the platform which the government leveraged to complete the sales. Again in March, it was reported that about 40,000 BTC in wallets linked to the U.S. government were on the move. It was however, discovered that a significant portion of the coins were being transferred internally while the others were on Coinbase.
During that time, Glassnode noted that “approximately 9,861 $BTC seized from the Silk Road hacker have been sent to our Coinbase cluster.”
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