If they got rid of it
The Chinese government is a silent cryptocurrency whale.
In 2019, they confiscated so many bitcoins from PlusToken. The state is a cryptocurrency hodler. 194,000 bitcoins and 833,000 ETH according to a report by analysis company CryptoQuant.
So China would be one of BTC’s largest shareholders, with almost 200,000, and would own almost 1% of all bitcoins already in circulation.
The People’s Republic was not enthusiastic about cryptocurrencies in the past. Cryptocurrency (Bitcoin) mining was even banned in 2021.
Imagine if they start selling 194,000 BTC to destroy the cryptocurrency market?
The cryptocurrencies that the Chinese government owns were confiscated during the infamous PlusToken scam, which was a Ponzi scheme that raked in billions of dollars at the time.
A Chinese court emphasized that the confiscated coins would be “processed according to the law.”
This Ponzi scheme was a cryptocurrency arbitrage trading platform that promised users daily payments. Users had to deposit at least $500 into the platform to receive a return.
Twitter’s new CEO, Elon Musk, must not like a fourth place one bit. The Chinese government is ahead of Voyager, Galaxy Digital, and even MicroStrategy.
It is still unclear whether the assumptions of the CryptoQuant website are based on solid evidence. After all, it is not known to this day whether cryptocurrencies are still owned by the Chinese government or not.
China is not the only hodler state
Bulgaria is also a cryptocurrency whale.
In 2017, the Bulgarian government broke with a crypto-crime ring and discovered 200,000 Bitcoins.
It is uncertain whether the investigative authorities only found Bitcoin at the time or actually had access to the loot, which is now worth billions. If so, Bulgaria would be an even bigger bitcoin whale than China.
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