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The German police will presumably sell the coins for euros because authorities don’t like to hold volatile exotic instruments any longer than they have to. I w
by pavlov 3y ago
The German police will presumably sell the coins for euros because authorities don’t like to hold volatile exotic instruments any longer than they have to.
I wonder if two billion euros worth of Bitcoin is enough to move the market. Most of the trading volume is in other crypto like stablecoins. Finding buyers worth two billions in actual cash may be harder.
- awestroke 3y agoThey will probably auction it away
- ursuscamp 3y agoIf they were smart they would keep them, but Western governments are rarely smart about this. They should be able to find buyers at OTC desks and ETFs without affecting the market too much.
- dellamorta 3y agoWhat exactly would be smart about holding this?
- rglover 3y agoThey'd have access to an asset that's highly valued, finite, and has the properties to serve as a future international reserve currency. It's a hell of a geopolitical "poker chip" to have fall in your lap.
- popcalc 3y agoIt’s a deflationary currency. No one is incentivized to spend it.
- amjnsx 3y agoIf the value of the reserve money is $2b one year and it deflates to $3b the next, does that mean you can print more fiat every year? Sounds like an attractive proposition to me
- rglover 3y agoIf you got the money with zero energy expenditure, you don't care what the current fiat market value is. It's like finding a free lunch sack of cash on a park bench. You could argue that there's an opportunity cost to letting the money stay parked, but because governments ultimately dictate the value of their own currency, that point is moot.
- Matticus_Rex 3y agoDeflation doesn't mean there's no incentive to spend. It means there's a slight relative reduction in the incentive to spend. You can argue that it's still bad, but it's a very different thing.
- infecto 3y agoYes, one day in the future we will find a use for bitcoin finally. It has been 15 years and we still don't have a really great use case for it but it will happen.
- rglover 3y agoThere are plenty of use cases for Bitcoin, this is just FUD.
- dellamorta 3y agoYes, the Gouvernement could use this „money“ directly to pay it‘s bills. Oh wait, it can‘t…
- infecto 3y agoSure there are plenty of use cases but no real significant traction for the everyday consumer. Price fluctuation is wild, would hate to have this has a "currency" that I hold to pay the bills. Even ignoring the volitility, the transaction costs historically have been high enough that it is not attractive from the consumer lens. Not FUD.
- PeterisP 3y agoIt's not a unique opportunity in any way, if the German government somehow decided that it would be awesome to hold $2B or $20B of BTC, they can simply buy it at any time.
- rglover 3y agoRight now. As the supply dwindles, the ability to supply that demand will decrease dramatically. If you got it for free in a seizure, there's zero downside to just hold it and forget it until later (when, ironically, the government sends your own fiat currency into a hyper-inflation event).
- rwmj 3y agoThe government can simply print real money any time they want (or lean on the European Central Bank in the case of Germany). Why would they want to hold a useless tchotchke instead?
- darthrupert 3y agoPrinting money doesn't increase the amount of money in real terms.
- dellamorta 3y agoYes, it does. Because then there is more money.
- darthrupert 3y agoEconomics 101 might be a good idea before engaging in economics discussions.
- rglover 3y agoBecause that "useless tchotchke" is going to be a life preserver for their government when the boat they've been shotgunning holes into the side of (their own currency) for 60 years finally sinks.
- andruby 3y agoWhy would they keep them? That’s holding on to currency risk for a potential price increase. The government isn’t used to or wants to hold that kind of assets.
- miohtama 3y agoSome of the largest holders of Bitcoin are US and Chinese governments, due to confiscations. The government is not in a rush to sell.
- screeno 3y ago[dead]
- johannes1234321 3y agoFirst this is just a hold. They can't do much with it at the moment till court proceedings are over. If there are fines which go to the state the state is not supposed to speculate, but spend it on investments, repay debt or whatever the state else needs.
- PaywallBuster 3y agofor large transactions you'd do OTC sale (over-the-counter) where you handover the whole amount to a 3rd party this 3rd party then offloads the sale on their own timeline
- panarky 3y agoTransactions that aren't on an exchange still affect the market.
- simmerup 3y agoIf it shows any risk to the price of Bitcoin, Tether will just print tokens out of thin air to buy them. As is tradition
- DANmode 3y agoOf all the things to see the Tether people indicted for on HN, it's increasing the price of Bitcoin?!
- simmerup 3y agoIs that a surprise to you? https://blog.dshr.org/2024/01/good-news-for-tether.html?m=1 https://blog.dshr.org/2024/01/good-news-for-tether.html?m=1
- sebzim4500 3y agoThese conspiracy theories have been around for years, it's not new. I have no idea if they are true or not, but certainly the people that believe them do not have evidence.
- 3y ago
- Freeboots 3y agoI think I read long ago that it takes almost 7% liquid market cap to trigger a major movement. Current market cap $800b, so if true then no, 2b wouldn't be enough. I might be pulling 7% out of thin air though, it's been a long time since I was reading about crypto market manipulation.
- vitorsr 3y agoThe way large trades are done is you structure periodic block trades representing a small fraction of the volume in that time period. As an example you would sell 10% of the daily volume every day until you finish liquidating your assets.
- miohtama 3y agoGrayscale ETF has been selling $5B over the last two weeks. While the Bitcoin price is volatile, it has not significantly dropped.
- xiphias2 3y agoIt's not always the case. US government is still holding more than 100000 Bitcoins from the 200k it seized. It's a great way for governments to hold BTC without raising suspicion of ,,advocating for'' it.