Ki Young Ju, CEO of crypto analytics platform CryptoQuant, on Thursday informed his followers through his tweets that the Chinese government is a crypto whale.
Ki went on to explain that Chinese authorities seized 194K 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 more than MicroStrategy’s 130,000 bitcoins.
If his assessment is true, then the Chinese government is one of the biggest BTC whales. But the important question is why would China continue to hold such crypto assets when it was known to be anti-crypto? The answer is obviously clear because owning a large number of such coins could give them the leverage to turn the market around and make money – everyone wants to make money in this world.
CEO of CryptoQuant he commented: The Chinese government “can hold BTC because it can diversify the portfolio and give them control over the crypto markets”.
In November 2020, the Chinese authorities arrested 109 people suspected of involvement in the PlusToken cryptocurrency scam. A police crackdown on a Ponzi scheme resulted in the seizure of billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies.
Based in South Korea, PlusToken has been touted as a high-yield investment opportunity for traders interested in cryptocurrencies. The investment tool promised 9% to 18% monthly returns to investors mostly based in China and South Korea, who then deposited Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and EOS on the platform.
Chinese court document said 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 seized by the fraudulent operators from law enforcement. During that time, digital assets were worth nearly $4 billion, according to the report.
According to the court report, the proceeds from the seized digital assets went into the treasury, but again it is unclear whether the Chinese authorities got rid of the cryptocurrencies or sold them in bulk for fiat currency.
Besides China, the US is also the next biggest bitcoin whale through its seizures of cryptocurrencies, such as from the infamous Silk Road darknet market and other confiscations. According to media report, the US government holds 1% of all bitcoin supply. Although the government routinely auctions seized bitcoins, it still holds about $4.08 billion worth of the cryptocurrency.
Other governments have also been identified as holding huge amounts of Bitcoin. For example, Ukraine holding up to $2.01 billion in bitcoins through donations. The Bulgarian government holds large chunks of cryptocurrency. El Salvador too holding large amount of bitcoins through its current government initiative.
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