German law enforcement authorities have made a significant move in the crypto space by transferring 6,500 bitcoin, valued at around $425 million, from seized funds. The entity responsible for the transfer is believed to be linked to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), as identified by Arkham Intelligence through its onchain monitoring systems.
This transfer follows an earlier announcement by Arkham Intelligence, made four months ago on the social media platform X, where they flagged an address allegedly belonging to the BKA. The funds in question, totaling nearly 50,000 BTC (approximately $2.12 billion), were seized from the operators of Movie2k.to, a film piracy website that operated in 2013.
According to Arkham Intelligence, the BKA received the bitcoin in mid-January through a ‘voluntary transfer’ from the suspects involved in the case. Besides the recent 6,500 BTC transfer, the wallet also moved some funds to another unknown wallet. Subsequently, batches of 500 BTC were sent from this unknown wallet to exchanges such as Bitstamp and Kraken. Despite these transactions, the BKA’s wallet still holds 47,859 BTC, currently valued at over $3 billion.
The approach taken by governments in dealing with seized cryptocurrency has evolved in recent years. Instead of relying solely on auction processes, authorities are increasingly engaging directly with centralized crypto exchanges like Bitstamp and Kraken. This shift is aimed at facilitating quicker liquidity into the market, compared to traditional methods of selling to private buyers.
