The Bitcoin price funk could be about to get a lot worse if the US government starts selling BTC to run down its balance of 210,000 coins – but Bitcoin alternatives like Bitcoin BSC could be the beneficiaries.
The US government is the largest sovereign holder of Bitcoin globally. According to data and analytics site Glassnode, the US government holds 210,429 BTC.
Put that another way, its balance amounts to nearly 1% of token supply. But given that the circulating supply is 19,495,404, minus the 4 million Bitcoin estimated to have been ‘lost’, the US government holds 1.35% of the coins in available in the marketplace right now.
Glassnode estimates that lost and hodled coins together amount to more than 7.87 million BTC, which it calculates by subtracting ‘Liveliness’ (ratio of coin data stored to coin days created) from 1 and multiplying the result by the circulating supply.
That equates to 11.62 bitcoin effectively available for trading, raising the US government proportion of total effective circulating supply to 1.8%.
Whichever way you look at it, the US government has enough Bitcoin to move the price dramatically if it decides to sell. US sovereign holding has not fallen below 200,000 since April 2022.
The last sales were in March and July. Both groups of transactions were related to the hoard of bitcoin acquired when the Silk Road darkweb marketplace run by Ross Ulbricht was taken down by the FBI.
Bitcoin was priced at $22,216 on 8th March when it was spotted by security firm Peckshield that government bitcoin was on the move, with at least one transaction tracked to a Coinbase wallet. Two days later, on the 10th March, the price of Bitcoin had fallen nearly 10% to $20,187.
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