Ki Newborn Ju, chief executive of analytics platform CryptoQuant, on Thursday informed his followers via tweets claiming that the Chinese government is a cryptocurrency whale.
Ki went further and explained that Chinese authorities had seized 194,000 BTC from the PlusToken scam in 2019 and hold $6 billion worth of digital assets in their national treasury. His analysis shows that China’s Bitcoin holdings (194,000 BTC) are larger than MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin stack of 130,000.
If his assessment is true, then the Chinese government is one of the biggest BTC whales. But the critical question is: why would China continue to hold such crypto assets when they are known as anti-crypto? The answer is seemingly clear because having gigantic amounts of such coins can give them leverage to change the market and make money – everyone wants to make money in this world.
CEO of CryptoQuant commented: The Chinese government “may hold BTC because it can diversify the portfolio and give it control over the cryptocurrency markets.”
In November 2020, Chinese authorities arrested 109 people suspected of involvement in the PlusToken cryptocurrency scam. A police crackdown on a Ponzi scheme led to the confiscation of billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies.
South Korea-based PlusToken was touted as a high-return investment opportunity for traders interested in cryptocurrencies. The investment vehicle provided monthly returns of 9% to 18% to investors primarily from China and South Korea, who then stored on the Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and EOS platform.
Chinese court document listed 194,775 BTC, 833,083 ETH, 487 million XRP, 79,581 BCH, 1.4 million LTC, 27.6 million EOS, 74,167 DASH, 6 billion DOGE and 213,724 USDT as confiscated by law enforcement from fraud operators. The report found that digital assets were worth almost $4 billion at the time.
According to the court’s report, the proceeds from the seized digital assets were forfeited to the treasury, but again it is unclear whether the Chinese authorities got rid of the cryptocurrencies or sold them entirely for fiat currency.
Apart from China, the United States is also another top Bitcoin whale thanks to cryptocurrency seizures, such as from the infamous Darkenet Silk Road marketplace and other seizures. According to media report, the US government owns 1% of the entire Bitcoin supply. While the government typically auctions confiscated Bitcoins, it still holds approximately $4.08 billion worth of cryptocurrencies.
Other governments have also been identified as having huge amounts of Bitcoin. For example, Ukraine has as much as $2.01 billion in Bitcoin in donations. The Bulgarian government owns gigantic parts of the cryptocurrency. El Salvador also has gigantic amounts of Bitcoin as part of its current government initiative.
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