Bitcoin Forum

Bulgaria has become the first nation in the world to hold more Bitcoin than it has gold. According to reports the country holds more than 200,000 BTC, worth around $2.1 billion at today’s prices. In comparison it only has around 40 tons of gold which is currently valued at around $1.8 billion.

Source : https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/07/22/bulgaria-big-on-bitcoin-as-reserves-could-exceed-its-gold-stash/

This is massive and good foresight. I wish some African countries can follow the same line and amass bitcoin for the coming technological financial-economic. Just imagine how rich the nation of Bulgaria will be when bitcoin hits $30,000 or $50,000. Good move by the Bulgarian government. 

Anyone here have any idea of how this kind of thing works?

The government is responsible to hold the coins in a cold wallet?
They are allowed to trade and try to have more coins or they only bought and will keep safe for a long period?

If anyone have access to this information, please share with us

I assume thats probably it. They probably store it in a cold wallet and just hodl. They could use it as reserves and print out fiat based on that. Would like to know more on its workings though. If anyone knows please shed some light here.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5167571.0

This is truly a great effort from a country that is on the growth track. Bulgaria being a country that's major economy flow happens through metallurgy, electronics, mining, ship building, petrochemicals getting into the bitcoin industry is really a big thing. This will contribute some percentage to the economy of the country and following Bulgaria can expect more countries prefer holding bitcoin.

I wonder how many signatures are on the multisig wallet?

Damn, I didn't knew that some countries actually investing in Bitcoins. And 200 000 Bitcoin is huge number, we can call Bulgaria as whales. I hope that they keep all their Bitcoins in a safe place. Gold has been used as reserves for a so long time and Bitcins is much more risky investment. For example, imagine what would happen if someone will hack their wallet and steal all their BTC. It would be disaster. But obviously Bulgaria can make a lot of nice money from this investment. It would be interesting to know at what price they bought most of their BTC.

Well it was about time. This will set an example, perhaps more countries will follow.

I'm not sure how they will count those reserves (against fiat or commodity), but one thing is clear, if they are used as such (ie. never) just by holding they are going to multiply its equivalent value over the years.

At the same time it is far easier to keep them safe, if they do their homework, and make a multi sign wallet and keep the seed words very well protected.

No matter how many tons of gold, a little piece of paper can hold as much or even more value. It is easier to secure a protect that sheet in a bank vault than tons and tons of ingots (but those are heavy to move).

What other countries have reserves in bitcoin, and in what approximate amounts? I think this deserves a section in the Bitcoin wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/).

Nobody has invested in anything.
It's all related to the 2017 seizure of 200k coins.
https://www.coindesk.com/bulgarian-government-sitting-3-billion-bitcoin

Reheated soup, poor journalism and ...let's see in what mess this thread turns out.


 

Interesting, that seizure took place on Dec 7 2017. BTC was 16k USD that day, some politician would argue it lost value...
But if they keep holding it, i'm sure they will make profits. 16k isn't too far away.

One would wonder where these coins are stored because there are enough blockchain analysis firms that would have noticed the sheer number of similar movements of funds that would link them to an unknown whale hoarder.

After such a long period of time I would have expected to see some developments here, but since there aren't any developments, a story like this is possibly made up or severely exaggerated. News outlets like to add some spice to their content.

Governments aren't in the mood to hold such a large number of coins that may become worthless as per their usual way of thinking. They would make it big news in order to attract as many potential buyers as possible to their state auction.

And this article tells that the coins were sold in 2018: https://bitcoinist.com/bulgaria-not-bitcoin-1-6b-finance-minister/

And it 2017 authorities said that they didn't seize any coins: https://emerging-europe.com/news/bulgarias-bitcoin-mystery/

And some suspect that it's a misunderstanding, that comma might have been a decimal separator, so Bulgaria seized only 200 Bitcoins: https://news.bitstarz.com/whats-the-story-behind-bulgarias-missing-bitcoins

Once again, I fall for this regurgitated news. I should have done a bit more research on it.

Well, in some way this makes more sense than what most people would think. The average yearly price of Bitcoin has increased every year, for the last couple of years and having Gold somewhere in a vault is no garantee that you are the owner of that Gold.

I have heard that countries have bought Gold <on paper> and it was supposed to be stored for safe keeping in Fort Knox, but they do not have access to those vaults to verify that it is actually still there.  ::)

Gold ownership is sometimes just an entry on a centralized database or a piece of paper. <certificate or report>  ::)

It seems to me that there are two or maybe three possibilities here, and first one is that Bulgaria is get those Bitcoins and in some point they decide to say "No we do not have them", just because they figured out what it is really about. Fact that Bulgaria is EU member does not mean much, the degree of corruption is extremely high in that country.

Another possibility is that they did not actually get in possession of any Bitcoins, and that it was something else what is an inexperienced investigator misinterpreted. Third option is that they have those coins, but some of the people who participated in the investigation turned to the dark side and hack the 
government - easy come, easy go.

up Bulgaria! This is one country that has made a conscious decision to embrace a disruptive technology (blockvhain technology not necessarily Bitcoins) with the potential to completely redefine transactions as we know them. It is just to show that the government of countries are acquiring Cryptos whether the come out to say it or not.

Not gonna lie, that some kind of ridiculous misunderstanding right there. 200k itself is kinda sketchy considering the huge amount itself almost 1% of the total supply and no one bats an eye for a long time and observe further into the use of that money and how is the auction. Not to mention that the country will be bathing with money if that's true since that means they get their reserve doubled by auctioning the bitcoins.

Oh shit, I falled into fake news. Actually, I'm a bit disappointed that this story is fake. But yeah, 200 000 Bitcoins probably is too big numbers and there was mistake. Maybe 200 or 2000 Bitcoins would be more close to reality. But still, there are lot of unanswered questions in this story and probably we will never know what really happened there.