Topic: Bulgaria Government Shocked To Discover It Owns $3 Billion In Bitcoin - page 3. (Read 1010 times)

I hope that the Bulgarian laws have rules about bitcoins. Curious if it would count as "goods" rather than "money". From what I remember if the police finds cash it would go straight to the bank and then it's split between different agencies responsible for that operation since there's no point auctioning money.

But yeah, I'm curious how the Bulgarian government would handle this.

It may not be too easy to sell them. The laws usually ask for public auctions to sell confiscated goods.
And the buyer will do as he please with the bought coins. I expect the buyer be an investor that will not just dump the coins.
Another issue is.. the government will need somebody ("a specialist") to split that wealth to values people/companies can actually buy.
All takes time...

The question is when the Bulgarian government would dump these coins. Would they wait for the price to increase first?

As for governments just confiscating bitcoins and selling them, the dilemma for them is if they keep doing it often, the price drops but if they don't they'd miss out as ither governments do it.

You don't understand because you don't understand open source. when some countries invest massively on one coin to have control, other countries could invest on some other coin for the same reasons. how else some of the coins skyrocket?
They will never admit it in the media officially. if you were not kids you would've know that governments and their central banks answer to the world bank, if you find $3 Billion, first pay your debts to other countries, they are not admitting it to keep the money off the world bank's records.

Sometimes I feel like why they are shocked, and why would they ban it if they can adopt it and ask people to pay taxes for it. I mean this would be government’s second income except the national taxes. This will help taxation easy as well as the richness will come in no time within the nation. If they are lazy enough to implement the system within their country which can help them to achieve the proper protocol then they will always choose options like this to overcome that situation. Never understand why on the earth would they ban bitcoin and not get paid by it or create new employment vacancies for those who are interested in digital work force. Have you guys though of this.

Cool. So we have someone officially from the Bulgaria to confirm that no news like that is being published over media or aired anywhere. Though the news was true I'm not sure that it would have impacted bitcoin negatively because we know very well in such situation people from the rest of the world try to buy more coin when the prices are dumped in negative zone. This is more or less good news for the investors, well in this case it would have been good news but there is no official release from it.

Th prices are dropping currently because of hard fork may be but I'm sure it will rise again once people come to know that they are going to get free coins. Lolz.

Confiscation of bitcoin from criminals is not going to be easy thing ,you know. There are quite a few things that need to be taken into consideration. Confiscation of bitcoin has not only happened in Bulgaria but in many more countries. Point is confiscation scares people which is not a good thing. Legit guys feel scared of losing all their money. Bulgaria, Having 3 billion $ as it's GDP is almost equivalent to 5% of it's GDP. This indicator can be taken into consideration by many economies but not by confiscating but by some other measures.

Zerohedge has a varied output on crypto. I guess Zerohedge is a team and "Tyler Durden" is a bunch of people. Sometimes they say Bitcoin is the second coming of Jesus, other times they say it's the devil. It's pretty confused for anyone used to reading a website that only has one side.

What is a permanent is the comment section. It's filled with clueless old goldbugs that have been watching BTC fo up since the beginning, and they are still in denial.

Didn't other governments participating get to have a share of the seized bitcoins? Greece would like to have a piece please. It would be particularly helpful for our country's economy, plus it will be fun seeing deranged politicians in the Greek parliament fight ovet the coins.

The governments aren't the holder types and even if they were to ask some bankers what to do the answer would be sell now before the bubble pops.
They will most likely put it on auction soon. I'd also expect raises for the agents who got the coins. The poor will get nothing


You can forget about it. Governments are there to benefit from your work not the other way round. No charity, get back to work!

This is news for intense speculation but I do not think this will affect the bitcoin ecosystem. Crackdown of this kind we have come across in many countries in many areas of crime. There have also been seizure of money, wealth, gold, property and so on. But that may have a little impact on the economy. In the same way apart from initial apprehension with respect to bitcoin transaction I feel this will not make people or officials take a stance against it.

This in fact can serve as a trigger for responsible intellectuals to combat the flaws present in the current system and practices. Evolution towards perfection is needed. Already bitcoin has proven to be a very smart alternative for transaction and also investment. It is in due course of time that I feel bitcoin should enter the mainstream transaction mediums.

Coming to the Bulgarian situation, well the officials need to complete the trial and when the seized bitcoins technically become the state's then immediately encashment to temporarily relieve the debts will be an ideal call. Seized money or property or bitcoins coming into circulation will be the best thing to do than get into a gamble especially as a state. Though this may cause a decline in the value of bitcoin temporarily, it will not hamper the prospect of bitcoin soaring high in the long run. It isn't always profit that should be sought. At times loss or a loss in the margin of profit can be embraced for a responsible decision.

Lmao it looks like Bulgaria could teach the US government a thing or two about HODLing. $500 million to $3 freaking billion is no joke. It would be interesting to see what steps they take next. Do they HODL? Do they go the auction route like the US? What's interesting is that if they auction it, then they're basically giving their citizens their blessing to use Bitcoin. That may not be so bad because they've obviously profited from it, and they already know they can crack down on crimes using Bitcoin.


Nah, if you read it, they don't back it with any statistics at all. I would take that with a grain of salt.

It is true that certain individuals who started bitcoin does hold the majority of the coins in circulation and it would definitely scare off any economist because they could manipulate the entire market if they plan on selling off the coins,i am not sure whether that is the reason of this decline,but the bubble has being taking the price without any breaks and may be because of that the price corrected ,will the Bulgarian government auction off the coins like the US ,i am not sure what they are planning with it.

Now since they've found out a lucky fortune, I hope they're smart enough to retain it for a few more years and not sell it. This could slowly help them settle their nation's debt and could probably be used to help the poor. I would be a happy Bulgarian if a certain percentage of those Bitcoin holdings were given away as an airdrop to the general public. A holding of that proportion could probably bring down the price of Bitcoin by a small percentage for a few days if it were to be sold to a large buyer(s).

Now apart from this, there's also news that the United Bulgarian Bank and the First Investment Bank (Fibank) have closed accounts of cryptocurrency exchanges a day or two ago. Could this mean that, they're not welcoming exchanges and the public from trading crypto? If this is the case, then I wonder if people would even be given a part of the lucky fortune.

If what you say is true, about no news coverage, then it confirms that this is actually just another FUD article trying to shake up the market before the launch of Bitcoin Futures. We need to remember that sometimes the movements on the market are related to speculation and news, in this case, the possibility of a massive btc dump.
But from the start I thought it was strange how this "news" was released right before Bitcoin Futures go live.

Definitely,it would have very less effect over bitcoin price since the marketcap of bitcoin is very high and so no need to get afraid of.

 they can not sell the bitcoins until the crime has been punished, ( i think) I mean the criminals judged and in jail. Up to this they don't really own the bitcoins but seize until the story is judged in court. It's what they usually do for example with drug dealers they seize the cars, houses, business and at the end only they sell for their profits or to compensate the victims if there is any.

Isn't there a U.S. agency that seized some bitcoins from a website on the darkweb (skrillroad or something like that) I don't remember about a decline in the price when this news was out

I`m from Bulgaria and i`m not sure that these news are true.There aren`t any information coming from the bulgarian media about this.If the bulgarian government really owns and really wants to sell these bitcoins,i think that they will do it after a few months.We don`t have to worry about the price being dumped.
After all,it`s only 3 billion USD.Such amount can`t have impact over the entire bitcoin price.

I am more interested in those 1000 people who has 40% of bitcoin. It looks like the they are the neck of this thing and can fluctuate the market badly. But again if they are kind of whale people then they may not get scared of this news as what it has got to do with their investment as long as they are not in the Bulgaria country. That is the point here really, so I think there has got to be some different reason for the current decline in the market, may be a another market correction per se.

Im believer of whales, because they hold great amount of bitcoins and they can easily spread out the chain of events to panic sell others and thus leading to declined price.

Nobody cares about the Bulgaria, as nobody cared about the China, Korea, Indonesia etc etc. So I think bitcoin will rise even faster now as people were waiting for the bitcoin to go down so that they can buy cheap. :-)

This is huge and people think that even if they have 1% of it it's enough for them . Here government is holding such a huge number of Btc that if they sell thier reserves will increase with billion $.

May be government will keep continue holding as they also think the price will rise in coming years .