Bitcoin Forum

What do we make of the coverage of institutions and governments quietly buying up large amounts if Bitcoin? Is there much reliable info/coverage on this? Seems like this might not be getting the attention it deserves. Or maybe I'm just being led on by suspicion/curiosity.

Opinions? Inside info haha

Where did you see that governments in particular are buying up Bitcoin? I don't think I've seen a single example of any major government buying up anything more than a nominal amount of BTC.

Most major governments, with the US in particular, already have large troves of Bitcoin that are seized from criminals. For instance, I think I recall the US seized 100,000 BTC from the operators of Silkroad.

I doubt they need any more than that.

There's no evidence that governments are quitely buying bitcoins. I heard the case of Bulgaria only that they have summed up a huge amount of bitcoins. But no other government has made it public and neither they will!

The case is even complicated for corporates! No one is ready to provide information on their crypto holdings and their research on cryptos!

You can follow the below links and periodically visit for updates,

https://blog.chainalysis.com/
https://ciphertrace.com/blog/

Probably you will get some insights from these analytics companies!

We really don't know for certain if government are into bitcoin. But you have to ask yourself what benefit the government can get out of it? As for institutional money, I have my speculation that they have been in the ecosystem already, even prior to the peak in 2017, but this is just my opinion.

There is no solid proof stating that bitcoin is being is being bought by governments and institutions. There were some predictions that institutions might also engage into buying and holding of large volume of funds for profiting in the long term.

From a press release from Southeast Law Enforcement Center in 2017 revealed data regarding Bulgaria having half million dollars worth of bitcoin. The same calculation gives a 2 million worth to be into the reserve of Bulgaria which is higher that of their gold reserve.

It is the only country in which data related to the bitcoin reserve got known and calculated.

I don't have info, much less an inside one. But if I were to take some inklings from the statements of the recent United States congressional hearing on Libra and cryptocurrency, I would say a great many of them must have already bought a bunch of Bitcoins. I mean, would you not if the likes of Winklevoss are on it? And saying that Bitcoin is unstoppable means a thousand words, which cannot be hidden with such a seemingly unbiased remark.

i think you may be making bad assumptions after reading the recent articles that have been circulating among the news sites and were spammed all over reddit talking about "institutional investors buying bitcoin". which has nothing to do with "governments" buying bitcoin and we don't have evidence to believe otherwise. there is a lot of incentive for individuals and institutional investors to buy bitcoin but it is the same incentives that have existed forever and they have been buying bitcoin just as long. i don't think that much has changed.
with Bakkt news these days this might have increased but also we are not seeing any kind of change in the market and on the charts so again we have no evidence...

In that case not all the governments are using it that's why there are still banning it. As per article Naamani hopes it will lead to bigger and better things we as an individuals have different perspective like Naamani said I can say its true and what the technology can do in the future.

They are making some fake news and pushing the price to move down and then purchasing a big amount and they are continuously doing this.

but they are not "using" those coins. the seized coins have a clear fate and are only auctioned off to the public like everything else that the law enforcement seizes.
what this FUD that OP is pointing to and has been circulating on the internet lately, is referring to is basically about government buying bitcoin to manipulate the price. which doesn't make any sense at all if you ask me!

Hey

I don't think they are actually buying bitcoins .
When it comes to government and institutions , they prefer Saving the money (if it's white) in banks and all .

BUT
Let's now talk about the corrupt ones , they usually have to leave no trail , bitcoins is more or so perfect for them , they can buy and send money using bitcoins internationally without anyone knowing , it is prevalent in the black market , like a lot prevalent.

Source please.  ::)  A government cannot simply use taxpayers money to speculate with high risk investments. It is highly unlikely that a lot of governments with good governance would openly admit to speculating with bitcoins. Yes, governments waste tax money on fruitless expenditure and they over pay for goods and services, but they cannot gamble money on high risk investments.  :P

The main aim of governments in a democratic government is to keep the voting public happy, so that they would re-elect them in the next election and to stay in power. So if the voting public gets wind of "speculation" being done with a high risk investment, those voters might not be that happy.  ::)

The US auctioned those 144,336 Bitcoins (https://www.ccn.com/feds-net-48-million-from-the-sale-of-silk-roads-bitcoins-but-miss-out-on-600-million-payday/) for $334 on average:

I wouldn't be surprised if some agencies buy some Bitcoin for whatever reason, but I doubt they'll buy large amounts in secret using an unofficial black budget to avoid attention.

I dont think its true.its simply impossible because there are rules and inspection mechanism and if this reveals, that governent has to resign.maybe only countries who deal with embargo.

Not sure from where you are getting these information about governments buying up large amount of bitcoin, is that even possible to spent tax money on what ever they want and if that is the case which country is doing that  :P. Institutional investment will take the price to new levels and we are yet to see huge investments from institutions like we used to see in the stock market and if that happens the bitcoin market will be a trillion dollar investment platform ;).

See bold - That’s the way governments & institutions want it to be, they want to buy up all the coins they coin without any publicity. They want the coins as cheap as they can.

If governments and financial institutions were buying large amounts of bitcoin,the price will definitely not stay in the 10K range.Large transactions can be tracked and everyone can see them.I don't see any large transactions in the blockchain.The idea of a government buying btc seems stupid to me.They can just confiscate it.

i think they don't have to buy bitcoins, if they want some they just seize them - as some members here already pointed out.
mtgox coins sold in japan, silkroad coins auctioned in the us ... i think the gov is not interesting in keeping bitcoins

I agree that it sounds like a conspiracy thing. There are some govs, though, that are believed to have a lot of bitcoins, right? There are some articles about it on Investopedia. According to this  (https://www.investopedia.com/news/which-governments-are-hoarding-bitcoin/)article, Bulgaria has 200k BTC, North Korea definitely has quite some (but since it's North Korea, there's no detailed information), whereas according to this (https://www.investopedia.com/news/how-us-government-handles-its-stash-bitcoins/) article, the US government at least used to have $1billion worth of coins. But all of these things are more or less official, known from the auctions of the seized property (like the one you've mentioned with Silkroad), and it's not something that became more active recently, so I think the op might be wrong.

Now that you're asking, I guess you don't know anything about company structures. In fact I think we can talk about all these company purchases.

We are constantly reading the news that large companies have purchased or will receive cryptocurrencies. But it's not that simple. All the companies we call big companies are capital companies. And it would be a bit of a dream to expect them to make risky investments. We should not expect companies to invest in the current state of BTC. Or any other cryptocurrencies.

Everyone can expect the price of Bitcoin to go up. They don't easily put millions of dollars into this market for this. In addition, all these companies do not have the appropriate legal regulations to make these investments! So how will they show their BTC purchases in their accounting records? Balance sheets? Let's be realistic. Companies must act in an accountable manner.

Bitcoin is available to anyone, why it would be strange that governments or institutions buying Bitcoin or anything else? Some are in fear of it, but we can not stop someone to buy or invest in something. Maybe some governments are buying Bitcoins, we can not know that unless it becomes publicly known, but it would be foolish to say that some of them are not investing in something with such great potential.

The thing is that everything is done in secret, imagine if it become public that some big country like USA, GB or China is buying Bitcoin. Price would be skyrocket like crazy, and this is not something that is good for buyers. Accumulation of large quantities of Bitcoin over a long period of time via OTC keeps price at a relatively low level.

I really agree with you, that they will not want to open the door about buying bitcoin publicly, but it is true that to invest in Cryptocurrency there is no prohibition for users, even that will make the price of bitcoin skyrocket ..

Actually the government and institutions are not a frightening specter and not to be feared, even that would be an advantage for the holders ...

They have to be very attentive because at 1 month, the bolinger bands are open. A year and half ago the difference between the bolinger bands was approx 15000 USD.

Now we have a difference between the bolinger bands (at 1 month) of 10000 USD. This is approx 4000 USD closing/year for the difference between the bolinger bands. When the bolinger bands will close to approx 3000 USD, then will be the opportunity to buy. This will happen in approx 2 years from now.   

Some officials might have invested in bitcoin individually to make profits. They are same as ordinary people. But I don't think any government have invested in bitcoin. I am sure governments don't make trouble for themselves. Assume that a governments invest in bitcoin and it reveals. What will happen?? ‌‌Especially if bitcoin price decreases and causes a big loss.

That is more than possible to happen. Government officials have their other sources of income also.
If they are buying, that is their personal investments in crypto not being tied-up with particular government.
And in case, there is government buying their crypto reserves, they won't disclose it to the public.
Either way, this is good for crypto market. This will increase the demand and so the price will increase.

Institutions have to have a clear investment policy, they usually don't invest themselves but use some kind of fund manager company to do the investments. They will just indicate what level of risk they would accept and the fund manager can do the rest.
This usually means that for e.g. pension funds or similar long term investment institutions usually can buy some high risked investments, but only very little percentage of their portfolio could be that risky. Shorter funds (who only invest on shorter period of time) usually can't risk to buy into highly volatile things, because they have only short time available to pay back the funds, so they have to find something that would go up or at least won't go down by the time they have to pay...
So I don't really trust this news...

You may know governments don't like bitcoin so silent buys won't be a good idea from them. When they suggest people not to use bitcoin and in reality they buy them, you know this causes chaos between people and government so I doubt any government is interested in it. Also how much will they buy? Do they really want to hold even 7000 bitcoin? Any idea? It's very small amount for government.

It's a bit contradicting for the government to buy bitcoin since government would probably promote their currency than bitcoin. Since there's no solid proof, what other says are just merely speculations. But there's also a possibility that a government official would be into bitcoin but as an individual, and not for the benefits of the government.

Nothing surprising in this, because pravitelstvo often duplicitous and can to hate crypto but continue to earn on it

The governments and institutions can buy bitcoin in a large amount because they have huge money to buy secretly. I think there will be a show of power from them because they buy a large amount of bitcoin and they want to dominate the market with all of the bitcoin they have. They buy bitcoin secretly because they don't want the other countries to know what they did with bitcoin although they give warning to their people and maybe ban bitcoin to their country. But we don't know what is the truth from their reason to buy bitcoin in a large amount.

I keep reading and seeing that too. Did you read about the Virgin Bitcoin? I feel like this kind of has to do with institutions and large hedge funds buying up 'clean' bitcoin https://cointelegraph.com/news/virgin-bitcoin-most-in-demand-crypto-that-is-regulated-differently

I hadn't heard of this concept until Ciphertrace explained what it is in this video and its value

They would get more Bitcoins, if they try to build a quantum computer. There are more than 1,000,000 'shalecoins', Bitcoins with no owner https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5134441.0, waiting to become active.
Who will win the quantum race? Maybe a private group.

Yes, I only remember the real fact about Bulgaria, but no other government buying BTC os another cryptos

Governments are debating about BTC, and there's no consense yet, so it's almost impossible in near future

Maybe under its regiments, not the governments itself. There are laws to be considered and a government buying bitcoin would probably be kept hidden ad unknown to the public, it will cause public distress and questionings to the public servants. In anyway, may a government employee would definitely bought bitcoin, base on their own judgement they invest using their own money and not by the government as a whole.

They maybe, they may not. There is no full coverage or link of evidence that shows they are,  we should be a bit mindful of what we conclude on though.
However, looking at the way they are going about with full force on Bitcoin, it could be they are indirectly making it popular to stir up it price for their own gain if they had purchased it or trying to cause a price reduction because they didn't invest on it.

There is some evidence for North Korea, Russia, and other sanctioned states heavily acquiring bitcoin, where 'acquiring' isn't just purchasing. I would not be surprised but of course I don't know. If the US Fed was smart they'd be holding heavily, but doubt they are.

Those government and institutions buying bitcoin might have an ulterior motive for embarking on such feat, maybe their sole aim is to become self imposed whales that will control the price in the future, I am quite sure the US government will have an undisclosed huge amount of bitcoin and who knows  they might have been subtly accumulating more bitcoin covertly such that they can continue to dominate the world as world power in every aspect of economy.

If indeed governments are secretly buying up Bitcoin, those would have to be the ones far below in transparency index rankings. Saying it as any nation committed to transparency would at least inform taxpayers of such moves, however subtly or whichever surreptitious form.

Unless you're a Sultanate not taxing your people. Then sure, I wouldn't be surprised.

Fake news or overrated however. To get a government on board... When it comes to state coffers... Tough

Yes and I think they are keeping it secret because not everyone accepts or know how it really works.
But we could never know unless there would be a solid proof on it.
Who knows maybe some of them might have been playing or trading for a long time now.

Bitcoin is cryptocurrency that is acceptable across the nation which has been centralized as a digital currency, hence, is a good idea for this two set of organization to come in into the system, Having say that, bitcoin is more useful in the future to invest.

Most governments treat bitcoin or crypto in general as a threat so why would you even think they'll buy some? And besides, if they are really interested on it then why they keep it as a secret? Actually they supposed to reveal it on the public to show support on the crypto community of their country and spread the awareness in this technology as well, but since there's no such thing then probably a certain government is not interested to crypto at all.

I think what more possible to happen is that several of government enployees can have their own bitcoin savings. But talking to as a whole? Nah, impossible for now :).

Where did you find that the Government and its institutions are secretly buying bitcoins? Do you have any valid proof or any article that can back your statement? We might want to give it a read so we can judge if those articles are just some random click bait articles or just written to fool people and cause confusion or just to make conspiracy theories. Even if the Government buys bitcoin, its none of our business and they can do whatever they want with it.

I don't think governments as a body can invest into bitcoin without the notice of its nation and also undergoing series of security audits. But i think large financial institutions that are owned by individual are rather investing into bitcoin for the future gains when it finally gains the legalization across the globe.

There are still a lot of opportunities to make some money here with smart investments.

Pension funds are investing in Bitcoin. Institutional investors are buying Bitcoin futures, Google is investing in cryptocurrency. I mean.. we are just getting started.

as far as i know only bulgaria announcing their intention to bitcoin, i never heard any nation except bulgaria buying bitcoin. Where you found this news?

It's not just "buying" on the open market. It's also espionage and theft.
https://www.coindesk.com/north-korea-stole-2-billion-in-crypto-and-fiat-to-fund-weapons-programs

Are just making things up to see what will be people's response, or you actually got an inside info on this topic, either way that should be a good thing to the crypto community if both institutions and government are stocking on btc, but i doubt anyone here has such certainty that this is happening, everything is still base on remorse and if they are buying surely it will reflect on price.

I very much doubt that the government and the state can buy Bitcoin, because if this state is civilized and not totalitarian, then there is no dark market and dark budget, because all the spent state funds can be traced.  Especially if negative statements about cryptocurrency are officially heard from officials of some countries, then investing in cryptocurrency by official ones is also not feasible.  Although I think that officials themselves can have cryptocurrency in their personal assets.

I do not think US does have any investment in cryptocurrency, because if they had, Trump would not have come on twitter to make a statement which he knew could break bitcoin down a little and then break their investment, except maybe trump is just trying to create FUD that will make the price drop so that they can have chance to buy cheaply.

The only country that I don’t trust is North Korea, North Korea is too wise and could be gathering wealth secretly through the system by playing as whales. That is just an assumption though, only their government knows the truth. For institutions, I am sure we will have so many institutions who understand the technology of bitcoin will be accumulating bitcoin underground, and maybe that is why we do see some sudden jump in the price of bitcoin at times without explanation.

We already know Government institutions and wall street  are showing up interest in bitcoin and we have seen recently Fidelity may come up with crypto platform which is big move for crypto currency industry all together

Intentions varies with respect to business options and investors plans or motives. the buying up of bitcoin by governments and institutions is tied to its relevance and also the perceived scarcity of bitcoin in time to come. As it has been observed over the years, all efforts to limit the usage and spread of bitcoin has proven futile. They are making smart moves by buying BTC and I will advice you to do same.

Personally, I do not communicate with government organizations and companies,so I do not have reliable information whether they buy cryptocurrency masse or not.Personally, I think that this is an exaggeration and the government does not make sense to buy bitcoi  masse.

We wont able to know on what are those behind the scenes or transactions does the government hiding.Accumulating or not, ex. on trumps speech, i dont completely believe on that and its impossible for US government wont get a piece of the pie.

About institutions then there no doubt that they are involving theirselves into crypto investment yet investors mind will most likely jump into things which are being hyped or trending.

I agree with you
In my opinion, no government have invested in bitcoin. But I think, if we list the countries that might investing in bitcoin, dictatorship countries will be in top. Because it's nit easy for countries like United States to invest in bitcoin. there are restrict rules there.

Interest doesn't mean buying. The headline is really exaggerated and probably even fake. If governments were to buy bitcoin just to hold it it would mean weakening their own currencies.

If they really wanted to destroy bitcoin they would be able to do it. They could print a lot of new money and use it to buy all bitcoins that you can and then close all of it in a vault making the supply so low that it will be impossible to use it as a currency.

Governments will buy bitcoin only if it is spelled out in their plans.That is, if the purchase will be made, then it should be, at least, economically justified.How can financiers and economists who work for the government justify the purchase of a large amount of bitcoin?I think this is bullshit.Hearsay and reality are in different planes.

The government might put some limitation, they have a lot of money to buy Bitcoin and they know already the risk they brought in. They'll never destroy bitcoin cause it is impossible to do it. I know they have that interest to invest crypto and they'll probably be planning into it but they want it to make safe.

Bitcoin investment is a big money and the government might be thinking if it could affect their financial capabilities when they buy bitcoin. Of course, it needs a plan and not causing conflicts between the government leaders and their people.

i don't think that a government has to buy bitcoin, in some countries they already allow to pay taxes using crypto. ;)
it is more likely that institutions and banks are secretly buying bitcoin and spreading bitcoin FUD to the naive public at the same time (JPMorgan tactics).

there are names to be said, politicians knows what is good, they work on government to play it safe, insurance, healthcards, benefits and allowances are provided by government to their employees, but the good thing is they know how to secretly invest in a sure win investment. maybe not now that many people could realize how powerful crypto is.

crypto investment is like investing in a certain country stocks and trade exchange.

instead of buying bitcoin, governments could also get into mining bitcoin and HODLing it. nevertheless, it is all unconfirmed rumors :P