Topic: Bulgaria Government Shocked To Discover It Owns $3 Billion In Bitcoin (Read 1061 times)

They will probably sell it and a lot of people in their cabinet will probably consider selling it since that amount can help them a lot plus it would be disastrous for the market if they were to sell now but I will welcome it with open arms because that means that there's a big opportunity to buy bitcoin at low price.

They are doing the right thing by holding on to those coins. Now the stash has grown to $8 billion. On the other hand, the FBI seized a similar amount of coins from Silk Road and its owner Ross Ulbricht. But they received only around $600 million after they auctioned off all those coins in 2015. The Mt Gox bankruptcy trustee also made a similar mistake with the recovered coins. He sold most of the coins in 2018 and 2019 when the prices were really low. Only the Bulgarian authorities did the right thing on such occasions.

I think government from single country won't be able to shut down the bitcoin throughout the globe. All they could do is shut the operations within their country itself. Bulgarian Govt. is stupid if they really seize the bitcoins and do nothing about it. They can literally put that money into their own banks and have contribution in the country. Well surely that's a money laundering but they should understand that holding that much bitcoin in the cold wallet will help the bitcoin community to move faster since it's locked up supply and inaccessible to the public or rest of the investors.
So 3 billion less is 3 billion purging for the BTC community. Idk, demand and supply guys, that's helpful. We should take a movement to thank Bulgarian government for holding these coins and not selling them. Hope you understand where I am going with this. 

It has been already explained in detail in one of the previous posts. They were holding Bitcoin not for higher returns in the future, but because they couldn't do it until the legal process is over. In countries such as Bulgaria and lawsuits and appeals take a decade or more to get settled. So as per the existing laws, the government can't sell these coins unless the court gives them permission to do so. And I hope that the permission gets delayed by another 10 years or so. The sudden influx of all these coins in the market can cause the exchange rates to go down.

According to information received from the Bulgarian Minister of Finance from 2018, all BTC that was seized was sold by the beginning of April 2018. If we take this as relevant information, any further discussion is superfluous - unless we go into conspiracy theories and assume that the Bulgarian authorities kept everything to themselves - which would not be strange given the level of corruption then certainly even higher than today.

Wait !!! is this the reason why Bitcoin was added to the stock market of Bulgaria? because of how much Bitcoin they owned..
sorry but is it best if someone will enlighten this matter..thanks.

should just hold it maybe for another decades who know if the next headline in 10 years gonna be "bulgaria government shocked to discover it owns $30 billion in Bitcoin" lol.
But how they could be oblivious to $500 million in their posession though, it's not some measly amount and other government i'm sure already gonna dump these coins to oblivion.
pretty sure the government isn't actually shocked but just informing media that this kind of things happen and then the media overblow this news. After all, this make a good news headline.

Many nations could do that in logic, but they are not doing that because that would be something that doesn't help anyone in the long run, but they are not doing the long term neither. You know how a nation could basically transition itself to one of the richest nations in the world? They could simply build renewable energy platforms, solar/wind whatever and they can spend all the 3 billion dollars on it, and hire so many people as well, all the electricity in the nation will be free, people would have jobs, thousands of jobs, and all the excess energy will be sold to other nations, keep growing that and one day you will be so rich that you will not need to worry about money as a nation.

USA is a HUUUUGE nation for example, it has millions of unemployed people and tens of millions of underpaid people, just build renewable energy business as government and eventually they will be once again economical giant of the world and be way way way bigger than china again.

I am right now laughing my ass off because how the hell did the government are oblivious of their own wealth, far as I know, the government wants their hands on everything and they want to monitor everything so yeah this one is kinda ironic if you think about it. But that's a good thing that they have bitcoin because it grows in time and they can use it as additional funds.

I get your point, but the money can't be stolen if it is used for repayment of debt. If it is used for any other purpose, at least a part of it would be stolen. I don't know much about the political situation in Bulgaria, but I have heard that there is a lot of corruption in the Balkan nations. IMO, the best thing to do for the Bulgarian government would be to hold these coins for the long term, with a target of $250,000 per coin, or $500,000 per coin. They can simply add this stash to their forex reserves (if they haven't done that already).

Bulgaria has quite the low debt to GDP percentage of around 20% compared to the average European country but they're also the poorest of all those countries, their GDP for example is the same as Rhode Island. And even despite this, those 200k BTC who are now worth around 8 billion, not 3 as in 2017 when the topic started will barely give the average Bulgarian 100 euros, that's 3 minimum government wage, far from what some people have described as getting the whole country back on track.


Not really, the police action was international cooperation against trafficking, and knowing how corruption works in the area I'm willing to bet that they acted only because of the pressure put on them by other countries and the EU, fighting money laundering and trafficking is not really something Bulgarian authorities are interested in, more like the opposite.


Yeah right, and how is better to be debt-free and living in poverty than 100% in debs and with the country being in the most envied in the world!
Ask any Bulgarian citizen what would they prefer, debt-free and the poorest in the EU or 3 times the current debt and the living standards in Slovenia?
Oh wait, looking at how many Bulgarian have fled the country to debt impoverished countries I think we have the answer already!

Actually the Bulgarian government hasn't done anything unusual. Similar to the other Eastern European nations, the legal system in Bulgaria is compounded by bureaucracy and red tape. The coins were held, because they could be sold only after the court rules that the proceeds are from criminal activity. The slowness of the legal system actually helped the Bulgarian government in this case. In any other country, the coins could have been auctioned in 2017 itself. In the US, they took just a few months to completely dump the Silk Road coins.

That's really a big value holding. During the peak price of bitcoin this value could've got increased even higher. Maybe with the Bitcoin holding it can turn itself a debt free country in the coming months/years. The country is termed to be the poorest among the entire European Union though it has got small population. However being a country without debt is truly amazing.

I think it's now bulgarian citizens and their representatives' duty to ask the government formally about these bitcoins. That is a huge amount of money which can be very helpful for the country. It must be watched closely and the fate of this money decided wisely. Bulgaria is really smart to have been holding these coins, that creates a big differential between them and other countries regards crypto adoption.

Discovered? What the hell? First of all I think it is quite a shock that they only have like 10-15 billion dollars in debt, that is a very very small amount and if 3 billion dollar covers nearly 20% of your debt then you are doing something awesome, or they are such a small nation that they didn't even make that much of a debt, I do not know which is the case but I can say that they have a very tiny amount in debt that could be paid very easily, like even one big company selling stuff internationally can cover it and then some all by itself, that is a huge deal.

Secondly the fact that they just seized crypto and now suddenly richer as a whole nation is a great deal for them, but they probably knew what they were doing before they did it, they probably didn't "discover" it but took this seriously enough because they knew that they were getting a ton of money from this seizure.

I have seen posts claiming that Bulgaria is still holding those coins. But it needs to be confirmed. Unlike what happened when the FBI seized the coins from Ross Ulbricht (they auctioned it after a few months in 2015, for around $300 per coin), I haven't seen any news about the Bulgarian government auctioning these coins. So I would assume that they still have them. But I am surprised that there is hardly any media coverage on this. This is huge news! Because Bulgaria has essentially wiped out its national debt with the help of Bitcoins! If this news is publicized, then it will encourage other countries to hold Bitcoins in their forex reserves (albeit in small quantities). 

Does anyone have more information what happened with this 213,519 Bitcoins and can someone identify exact addresses and transactions related with this?

In time when Bitcoin was seized from Bulgarian police it was worth around $500 million, and today that is worth more than $8,5 billion, that is more than a half of all national debt of Bulgaria ($15,5 billion according to worlddebtclocks.com)

They do not have a responsibility to give that money away, people are just going to spend that money in useless stuff, if anything the Bulgarian government should just keep holding that amount of bitcoin similar to what happens to gold, they could spend it but again that will be a mistake since the price of bitcoin still is very low compared to what it can potentially reach.

Definitely it is not that much easy to do this. Bulgaria government is either accused of this or not but believe me no one can retrieve any money out bitcoin on so short notice. These are just rumors and try to make disturbance and insecurity amongst the users. Bitcoins are not being legalized, why it is so? This is the reason. Not to do money laundering while governments are used to of it.

I was honestly surprised that it was not been audited for a long time since May and none have send some bitcoin amount to other wallets of the corrupt law enforcement who hold this case. And with that I absolutely applaud they’re government on this instances, if I know if this happens in our country a 3billion$ worth of bitcoin would be missing and go to those pockets/wallets by the corrupted government officials. It is a positive news in my eyes.

You mean like Bulgaria?!

Think about this... the population of Bulgaria is only ~7 million. Therefore the government made enough money for $420 per person. And lots of people are wealthy and don't need that, so they could give $1,000 to the poorest 35% imagine how much better their country will be!

If they held the Bitcoins their country could become the richest one in the world.

Had some countries been wise, they would have been able to make money by investing in bitcoins by now, they could have established mining factories where they would have mined it and thus have gotten money for some developments in the country.

That would be truly awesome if they had invested in bitcoin, now that they've got all this new found extra wealth they may consider cryptocurrencies more in the future. I think in time we will see a major county really take a favouring to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a whole, right now Japan is leading the way but in time I think others will overtake them to be at the forefront.

It's hilarious to think about the amount of times that people found an old address with a few 100-coins that used to be pennies a piece and then realizing that bitcoin is worth thousands of dollars a piece. It gives me greet joy to just picture all of the unsuspecting, overnight millionaires that bitcoin has picked like flowers around the world; whoever put it's faith in bitcoin has been rewarded handsomely, either monetarily or through the gratification of being correct about bitcoins success. Now, it seems that one of these outcomes is blatantly a better outcome, but not everyone can wake up a millionaire randomly so you've gotta choose your battles and take your speculation as a good lesson, do not miss the train when you're the one that sees it coming from a mile away.

The question becomes what is Bulgaria going to do with these coins? Do they plan to liquidate these coins and pay off some of their debt, invest in some infrastructure or something else that may benefit their people, country and overall situation? I think it may be smart for them to just hang onto their coins for now, you woke up with a money-tree, there is no reason to bonsai the tree, or to cut it short. This was a surprise to them and they should treat it with care, not like some careless lottery winner that wants to experience the finer things. Does anyone know if other governments hold a significant amount of coin, either through direct investment or through seizure of assets? These will probably be the governments that experience a really big jolt inn their economy in the coming years; before we know it we'll have every country running their own alt-coins because they all think it's just the next Fiat for them to control, print, tax, tariff, manipulate, distribute, legislate.

You are being stupid at this because anything that you confiscate become yours that means the bulgarian goverment has every right to use that money to pay their own debt or even to spend it overnight. It is from corruption of their own country so it is basically just taking their money backs from all those corruptors that corrupt with bitcoin

They have to hodl and wait 1 year, then they will be able to fully pay off the country's debt 

If I read correctly Bulgaria can now pay 1/5 of own debt with discovered amount of bitcoin. Btc was taken by government as an act against corruption and it's value is estimated to 3.6$ billion. In my opinion this is clean robbery by Bulgarian gov. rather than confiscation of btc.

That was shocking to know that Bulgaria is also involved in bitcoin .
Everyday such census comes from different countries and shock me . That indicates that the world is not that unaware of bitcoin though .
This would be ideal if they keep the bitcoins because the billion value may turn out to be doubled in future.

So, the question remains. Will the Bulgarian Government HODL and sit on 10b this time next year or would they just buy a bunch of alts and wait for a dip to buy BTC and make it 12b by this time next year? 

Even other countries may get more shocked when they would discover most of their money in bitcoins.It clearly shows that people are losing their trust in government issued currencies.They find bitcoin to be a safe haven.Even this amount would be very high if checked in US and other developed states.I think that they would dump it to recover the huge money.

Yes, governments seized bitcoin from people and when they discovers it is worth a lot of money government officials stole it for themselves in the name of the auctioning.

they know the development of bitcoin and they believe in bitcoin because bitcoin is a precious digital currency in the future they do not want to miss the opportunity to make its country become rich.

That price of BTC can influence the market to crash or rise, even though it is not easy to convert all of that coins in one day or two even if you own a business to prove that you have a money, a billion amount of fiat currency is not easy to pull from the government that is why Bitcoin have been accused to be an anti-money laundering.

P.S I hope that a small fraction of that money goes to charity work. 

i wonder what Bulgaria government do with that BTC coin now
i hope you can update this news here

i do not know but everyone said that the first group use BTC is criminal and after that BTC  use by many people but i'm sure some bad group keep use it
maybe they will change to other coin because for security reason
maybe just like you said that monero, dash and zcash
still anonymious

i wonder if 1000 people or 1000 BTC address
because i've read about some top BTC address that hold BTC coin is exchanger not person
link please... want to know more details

I don't know if bitcoin is accepted in their country or what, but that's one huge bitcoin that they did discover. If I'm the government I would auctions those similar to what US did and put the money into something meaningful. They could utilized that huge amount, improved their citizens lives, build infrastructure, there's a lot that can really be done with that money.


Yes, Zerhedge has varied output about bitcoin and cryptos, but for me they are really more a "GOLD" nut hugger. And what's funny is that they will praise bitcoin in the first paragraph of their article, then lash at it at the end. LOL. And I don't think that they are pressured or something as OP might speculate, they have been like this for the last 6 months, so I assume they are anti crypto's to begin with and more of a Gold website.

When I read this title I just considered that wow dude such governments are so amazing that they are investing such bight amount in bitcoins. They are working better for their population but here the story is totally changed. Yes, they are making money and they even intend to do money laundering. Bitcoins will help them in such a case because they are decentralized and no one can reveal them out.

Or to the contrary they could now be thinking about how to be even stricter on bitcoin and especially in terms of corruption or money laundering so that they can cease a further amount and be in an ever better position. It will be funny when it turns out they don't have the private key for those coins!

I think it will be keen to know what will be the next move of Bulgarian government upon bitcoins. It works different in the case of government and I think these seized bitcoins are going to stay seized for a long time as there will be number of discussions and meeting regarding its use. There are many options, they can opt for like selling all bitcoin at once  creating a storm in the market or they can auction the bitcoin at high prices and so on. I think they are likely to auction the bitcoin as funds like are most likely to generate revenue for once and country moves on.

This news it quite positive. Governments may be scared of bitcoin, but in case like this they discover that having bitcoin they seized makes them actually wealthier. I would bet a lot of money that the Bulgarian Government is not going to pass any laws to forbid bitcoin, they are probably astonished.

Politicians usually go far behind innovations like this, but now they have to deal with it.

Though people continuously stop or say negative things about bitcoin, they can't. Just imagine what happened now to bitcoin they just discovered, I'm sure many people were more encouraged to invest and believe on bitcoin. Not just Bulgaria, but there are so many other countries especially Japan or US who believe in Bitcoin.

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 .

US Government seized more bitcoin before but they put it into auction. I think Bulgarian government intended not to sell those coin from the start and just decided to keep it. Are they supporting bitcoin in their country?

If they are smart they will sit on those coins and will not sell them, they are just going to crash the market if they do, if bitcoin is really the future they may be sitting in one of the largest holdings of bitcoin in the entire world, their country may become a economic powerhouse by just holding bitcoins similar to what happens to governments holding lots of gold.

Now this is some news.
I really thought criminals were using more monero, dash and zcash.
Could this affect the price of bitcoin?
Do criminals really contribute to the very nice bitcoin price?

There was a bloomberg article claiming 1,000 people own 40% of bitcoin which might have scared off investors.

This is a bit scary if it is true, and indeed a reason to shy away,
How true could this be?

There, blessing out of thin air for a country, people say Bitcoin has been used by criminals, they never say that governments bust them and take their Bitcoins, happy dumping Bulgarian government, happy dumping, who wouldn't?

In bitcoin Balkans trust. Some countries seriously interest cryptocurrencies such as Bulgaria, especially Estonia. As some economists say an economic expansion is needed to fight with economical crisis. Crypto s could be a solution maybe

....

Not certain if this news caused the recent price decline. There was a bloomberg article claiming 1,000 people own 40% of bitcoin which might have scared off investors. There could be other reasons behind the recent decline, or it could be a sell off as traders dump to turn their profits.

There have been many posts on this forum claiming governments will shut down bitcoin or illegalize crypto. This article provides a 3rd option -- confiscation. States need not shut down bitcoin if they take it all from criminals, making themselves wealthier in the process.

Also, is it my imagination or is zerohedge assuming an anti crypto stance of late? It seems as if someone is pressuring ZH to publish news stories which criticize or attack bitcoin which is interesting.