The German government’s efforts to empty its bitcoin wallets of billions of dollars in seized illicit assets came to an end on Friday afternoon, with the accounts now holding zero digital assets, according to new data from blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence.
Intense anxiety that the German government’s massive sell-offs would cause the price of bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency in the world, to plummet, was spurred by the wallet transfers over the course of the last month.
Rather, a 3% increase in the value of bitcoin occurred. With a 1% increase in the last day, the value of bitcoin is at over $58,000 as of this writing.
The amount of bitcoin in the German government’s wallets was close to $3.4 billion in June, but Berlin has been working hard to sell off the assets it has confiscated. The Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), the German equivalent of the FBI, sold $2.8 billion in bitcoin earlier this month, or 50,000 bitcoin.
The U.S. and European governments moved money to Coinbase, Bitstamp, and Kraken, among other prominent cryptocurrency exchanges.
Market observers of the German government’s sell-off have kept a close eye on the transfers made to and from the government’s bitcoin wallet. They have noticed that a portion of these transfers have been reversed back to the government’s wallet addresses, suggesting that the BKA was merely assessing liquidity prior to unloading assets.
Due to the German government’s transfers, the “Fear and Greed” index for cryptocurrencies fell to “extreme fear” on Thursday; however, these nervousnesses were soon dispelled after the sell-offs were finished. Indeed, some research suggests that high levels of investor fear can be excellent times to purchase bitcoin.
According to a CryptoQuant expert, one of the best indicators of a bull market’s finest entry points is when short-term bitcoin holders sell their holdings at a loss and the fear index is absurdly high, as has been the case in recent weeks. On the other hand, long-term holders have historically signaled market peaks by taking sizable profits over several months, which hasn’t happened yet.
