On-chain analysts just caught the U.S. government moving around $2 billion worth of its massive BTC holdings, sparking market panic that it might be preparing for another sale.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin's price has steadily declined throughout the day, tapping $70,000 at 13:15pm UTC before crashing to $66,900 by 17:26 UTC.
- At 16:18 UTC, data from Arkham Intelligence showed that the government's Bitcoin wallet had moved 29,799 BTC ($2.02 billion) to a new blockchain address.
- That $2 billion was subsequently split into two addresses, one of which received exactly 10,000 BTC worth $669.35 million.
- “We believe this represents a 10,000 BTC deposit to an institutional custody/service,” Arkham said over Twitter on Monday.
- Historically, the government has sold whatever BTC it owns in batches of a few thousand Bitcoin at a time – some of which haven't been well timed in retrospect.
- Per Arkham's latest figures, the government now has 183,439 BTC ($12.25 billion) remaining in its coffers.
- The sale comes only days after both former President Donald Trump and candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr promised to establish a national strategic reserve of Bitcoin if elected in November.
- Both candidates said the BTC currently held by the government would be the starting point for this stockpile.