- Germany emerges as the third largest Bitcoin (BTC) holder among governments.
- The European nation currently has 49,858.88 BTC in its haul.
- Leading the rankings is the US followed by the UK.
- El Salvador trails far behind Germany at fourth place on the list.
Germany’s Bitcoin Holdings
According to the on-chain monitoring of Arkham Intelligence, Germany currently ranks third in terms of Bitcoin holdings among governments. The second most populous nation in Europe next to Russia has 49,858.88 BTC in its coffers amounting to $3,172,320,954.30 at prevailing rates of around $63,625 as of this writing at 4:25 AM UTC on Tuesday, April 30.
Based on the platform, the funds were traced to the now-defunct movie piracy site movie2k.to mid-January this year. This came as a result of an operation jointly conducted by German agencies with the support of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and an anonymous Munich forensic IT expert company.
The report of the Saxony Police said the unnamed accused voluntarily transferred the near-50K BTC units to them amid the charges filed by the authorities, which included violations of copyright and anti-money laundering laws. The digital assets in question were suspected to have been the proceeds of the pirate film site’s illegal activities.
“This is the most extensive security of Bitcoins by law enforcement authorities in the Federal Republic of Germany to date,” said the official report.
Other Countries with Whale Worth of Wealth in BTC
Leading the charge is the US Government with 212,847.30 BTC balance equivalent to $13,726,019,792.78. Next to it is the UK with 61,245.01 BTC in its digital vault equal to $3,896,775,176.48. Both countries appear to have sourced their digital treasure trove from several asset seizures.
Similar to Germany, the UK is yet to sell its Bitcoin holdings. This is in contrast to the US, which saw several BTC outflows from its wallet over the years. The latest transfer of Bitcoin out of the US Government’s wallet address was only three weeks ago as it moved 14.499 BTC to an unspecified wallet with address 3P9xJVnUr9htoQrd7k3Gi4Wb73KXMeCU9L to the tune of $992K.
Far behind the pack is El Salvador, which holds Bitcoin as a reserve asset and reveres it as a de facto legal tender. Despite getting dwarfed by its peers in BTC holdings, the country led by re-elected President Nayib Bukele appears to be the true definition of “diamond hands” as it continues to HODL the crypto asset since it started buying it in 2021.
El Salvador presently keeps 5,735.76 BTC in its treasury worth $364,943,209.63. It continues to hold on to its promise to buy Bitcoin on a daily basis until “Bitcoin becomes unaffordable with fiat currencies.”