Germany: Police seize bitcoins worth €2 billion – DW – 01/30/2024
www.dw.com
German authorities have seized 50,000 bitcoins, worth some €2 billion, in what could be the largest seizure to date in the country.
  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
    1·
    10 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    German law enforcement authorities said Tuesday they seized nearly €2 billion ($2.17 billion) worth of bitcoins in the eastern state of Saxony.

    The Saxon State Criminal Police Office said the seizure of 50,000 bitcoins could be the biggest to date of its kind in Germany.

    Police said they were investigating two men, aged 40 and 37, who are suspected of running a piracy website until the end of 2013.

    Authorities allege the men bought bitcoins from the money they earned from the portal.

    The seizure came after the “accused voluntarily transferred” the bitcoins to an official wallet of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), police added in a statement.

    The BKA did not provide further details about the transfer, but investigators cited by German news agency dpa said no decisions had been made regarding cashing in the bitcoins.

    The original article contains 174 words, the summary contains 130 words. Saved 25%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • makeasnek@lemmy.ml
    1·
    10 months ago

    If this sounds like a big number, keep in mind this is roughly 0.02% of the Bitcoin in circulation. The eventual total supply of BTC is 21 million BTC. Bitcoin’s market cap is around 800 billion USD, which puts it in the top 25 countries by GDP. Next to switzerland, bigger than Norway, Sweden, Vietnam or Israel. (GDP isn’t the same as market cap, just trying to give an example for scale).