GM!

The German government sent around 300 bitcoins to the exchanges Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitstamp — another possible $17 million sale.

This brings the total to 3,000 bitcoins over the past two weeks, but the government still holds over 47,000 bitcoins.

But where did these bitcoins come from?

An investigation into the owners of the piracy site movie2k.to, which operated until May 2013, led to the police seizing 50,000 bitcoins.
The two main operators are accused of distributing more than 880,000 pirated copies of movies and running an illegal streaming service between the fall of 2008 and May 2013.

One of the operators, the programmer of movie2k.to, and a real estate entrepreneur from Berlin have been in custody since November 2019.
The portal's profits, obtained through advertising revenue and fraudulent subscriptions, were used by the operators to buy bitcoins starting in mid-2012.

The investigations were conducted in collaboration with the German Federal Criminal Police Office and the FBI.
Bitcoin purchases in 2012 — when the price was around $10 — resulted in a “profit” of approximately 600,000% at the current #bitcoin price.