Arkham Intelligence revealed that the German Federal Criminal Police (BKA) seized nearly 50,000 BTC from the operators of the piracy site Movie2k.to.
On the social media platform X, Arkham Intelligence disclosed approximately four months ago that it had identified an address purportedly associated with the BKA.
Arkham reported in January that the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) confiscated nearly 50,000 BTC ($2.12B) from the administrators of Movie2k.to, a film piracy website that was operational in 2013.
Arkham added:
The BKA received the bitcoin in mid-January after a ‘voluntary transfer’ from the suspects.
In addition to the 6,500 BTC that was transferred on June 19, the wallet also transferred some funds to an unknown wallet. This wallet subsequently sent multiple quantities of 500 BTC to exchanges such as Kraken and Bitstamp.
The BKA wallet continues to contain 47,859 BTC, which is valued at over $3 billion, as of 12 p.m. EDT on Wednesday.
Governments, including the United States, have been progressively interacting directly with centralized crypto exchanges in recent years, as opposed to employing the auction process. This change implies that liquidity is more likely to be introduced to the open market at a faster pace than if it were sold to private purchasers.
