US Moves $2 Billion in Bitcoin, BTC Drops $3,500 in Value
Bitcoin prices plunged from $70,000 to $66,400 in just minutes after news broke that the US government moved more than $2 billion in Bitcoin.
Late on July 29 (Vietnam time), on-chain data compiled from Arkham showed that the US government unexpectedly transferred nearly 29,800 Bitcoin, worth $2.02 billion, to a new address for an unknown purpose.
This is part of the amount of BTC seized by US authorities from the Silk Road black market.
UPDATE: The U.S. Government has split the $2B Bitcoin into two addresses:
10,000 BTC ($669.35M): bc1qlap8hkt9genaljz5nt2zlehhudx63zlahr2zek
19,800 BTC ($1.33B): bc1qngydl7hmgdtmuqjmtsyj3pcwszv0yn5mj6kz4c
We believe this represents a 10,000 BTC deposit to an institutional… https://t.co/0aULBXGd8P pic.twitter.com/RTwtaqvMmM— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) July 29, 2024
The reason for the latest Bitcoin transfer from the US remains unclear. Some people joked that this was a move to prepare for the plan to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve for the US, as announced by Donald Trump a few days ago, or to hand over to the new custody unit, Coinbase, according to the agreement signed in early July.
Has to be this, right? https://t.co/NZqQPE6GoL pic.twitter.com/7Ek6bLwpeq— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) July 29, 2024
The last time the US government's BTC wallets transferred money was on July 23, with a value of only $3.96 million. At the end of June, US authorities also transferred $243 million to the wallet address of Coinbase. In April, the US also transferred $2.1 billion in Bitcoin seized from Silk Road.
According to statistics from Arkham, the US still holds nearly 183,500 BTC, worth $12.3 billion, along with many other cryptocurrencies in smaller amounts. As reported by Coin68, the US government is still the country that owns the most crypto, mainly from confiscations from criminal activities.
Bitcoin price immediately reacted negatively to the above information, falling from the $70,000 mark set just a few hours ago, on the occasion of the 100th day since the halving event, to $66,400. BTC has recovered in the past few days since the drop to $63,400 on July 25, after overcoming the pressure to repay Mt. Gox's debt, the days when the German government dumped $3 billion in Bitcoin, and benefiting from pro-BTC comments from US presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The sudden drop brought the value of liquidated derivative orders in the last 4 hours to nearly $100 million, with longs accounting for 97%.
