German authorities have sent an additional 282.74 BTC ($17.6 million) to cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase, Bitstamp, and Kraken, raising speculation about a potential sell-off of the assets.
The transactions were detected by on-chain analytics provider Arkham, which has been monitoring the movement of Bitcoin from addresses associated with the German government.
The move follows a series of Bitcoin transfers initiated by the German government in recent weeks.
The country’s substantial Bitcoin stockpile, worth approximately $3 billion, was confiscated from Movie2k.to, a movie piracy website.
In January, German police seized 50,000 BTC from the piracy website, marking it as the “most extensive security of Bitcoins by law enforcement authorities in the Federal Republic of Germany to date,” according to a press release.
According to Arkham’s data, on July 2 at around 8:20 a.m. UTC, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) sent 100 BTC ($6.2 million) to Coinbase, 150 BTC ($9.4 million) to Bitstamp, and 32.74 BTC ($2 million) to Kraken.
Additionally, 550 BTC ($34.3 million) were sent to an address labeled as “139Po,” which Arkham has yet to identify but suspects could also belong to an exchange.
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