Chinese Police Seize 1% of Bitcoin’s Total Supply

[shield132]

How on earth it can be a good news?? Having 4 billion USD worth of crypto assets in the hand of an authoritarian government!! It's good that a ponzi scheme is busted but Chinese government is not at all favorable to cryptocurrencies.

I don't know what Chinese law says, but in general for any such kind of financial frauds, the government liquidate the seized assets and return the money to its investors. That liquidation happens in fiat currency so I assume Chinese government will sell off the seized crypto assets. That's not a good news in this bleeding market!

There's no way in hell this coinage will ever reach an open market. Just like every other seizure in every other country they'll be auctioned or a private sale arranged. It's a more positive outcome for everyone than its previous state of affairs.

It's better than it remaining in the hands of the people who stole it. They were dumping constantly, and they deserved nailing to the wall.

Sometimes it happens like when things are confiscated, they are destroyed also. How will they act? Selling bitcoins on auction? Will they sell the whole supply alone? According to rules, they should sell the whole and not parts if I amn't mistaken and if that's true, then I think it will be hard or almost impossible to find the buyer. Btw, right now PayPal may buy the whole supply in good price, it would be double win for them but my thinking is just a supposition.

Btw imagine guys those 1% of coins were "burned'. What will happen to the price? Logically, it should significantly rise because right now there is a high demand but supply decreases by 1%.

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[Rikafip]

1% of the total Bitcoin supply is really a big amount. I can't believe that, is there any other source of that news?

PlusToken was a very well known ponzi scheme in China and South Korea, millions lost thier life savings so I am not surprised that seized amount is in billions of dollars. Numbers reported (194,774 BTC, 833,083 ETH etc...) are similar to those from article released back in July 2020 when prosecution of those involved started, so I guess this latest news is legit.

The system promised rewards in its native token eponymous token (PLUS) and managed to gather over 200,000 BTC, 26 million EOS, and roughly 789,000 ETH. After the fraudsters racked up all the funds, they left a simple message behind and wrote: “sorry we have run.”

On July 31, news.Bitcoin.com reported on Chinese law enforcement arresting approximately 109 individuals allegedly connected to the Plustoken project.

It’s still alarming that people up to this day are still into ponzi schemes and are still blindly sending their money over to these organizers.

And then people ask " are these scammers stupid, no one will fall for this 10% daily ROI scheme". People were falling for similar schemes before cryptocurrencies appeared, and all this made it just easier for scammers as people heard about others getting rich by investing in BTC so naturally they want piece of cake too. For many BTC is some kind of magic money.

One area of questioning though would be the cryptocurrencies’ fate on the hands of the Chinese government. That’s a lot of money, and could be used for virtually anything that they can think of.

They are not stupid, they will want to profit from this. If they really want hurt cryptocurrencies, they could do it anyway even without those seized funds. As others said, at least scammers won't be able to dump it.

[ReiMomo]

Indeed this is both good news and could also be bad news for if the Chinese government will sell all the seized Bitcoins that is almost 1% of the total bitcoin in circulation then I must agree that it will give a huge impact on the bitcoin's price especially that we are currently experiencing price shake and it will be possible that we may not hit the ATH within this year.

I must commend the Chinese government for they are able to execute their law and put it into action as these gigantic scammers fall behind to their authority and must be done globally for a lot of culprits are still at large and often cryptocurrencies are the target for there are a lot of people who are newbies in this field and can be easily fooled by such felon.

[hatshepsut93]

Good news, isn't it?

I think on a bigger scale it's not such big news. Yes, if China dumped those coins tomorrow on public exchanges, the price would take a deep dive, but years from now, it would be pretty irrelevant, even this worst-case scenario. I think any news about regulations or adoption are much more important, even if they seem smaller, because they can influence Bitcoin for years.

[bryant.coleman]

This is really great news!!!

PlusToken scam was one of the largest such acts we ever had in the recorded history of cryptocurrency. There are estimates that close to 3 million people were scammed by the PlusToken promoters, with up to $10 billion stolen. I have to appreciate the Chinese officials in arresting the suspects and seizing the stolen money. I hope this would discourage similar scams in the future.

From the article, it seems to me that the seized funds will be attached to the state treasury. So is there a chance of the victims getting any reimbursement for their losses?

And also, will the Europol ever manage to do what the Chinese did regarding PlusToken? Onecoin scam also resulted in huge losses for many users. And the last time I heard, the mastermind (Ruja Ignatova) is still roaming around freely in Germany.

[Fatemablabla]

I am happy that a ponzi scam got busted and the Chinese police did a good job here. But the thing I don’t like that, this news released when bitcoin was pumping. As they seized 1% of bitcoin, it really affected the market and the market crashed.

And another thing is if Chinese government release those funds on exchangers it will be a huge dump on the market. Because the amount is huge and it can be happen anytime.

[Wind_FURY]

Here I am starting to worry about institutions starting to HODL a large percentage of Bitcoins, large enough to censor us, and everyone in the topic is celebrating the fact that China HODLs 1% of the supply.

[meanwords]

And another thing is if Chinese government release those funds on exchangers it will be a huge dump on the market. Because the amount is huge and it can be happen anytime.

It's not like it's a super bad thing that would do a permanently damage to Bitcoin though. Yes there's going to be a huge dump but it's not like Bitcoin won't recover from that. Bitcoin has been tested many times and it won't go down easily just from that. Anyway, I doubt there's going to be dumping anytime soon. It's probably going to get hold for a very long time.

[Lorence.xD]

Here I am starting to worry about institutions starting to HODL a large percentage of Bitcoins, large enough to censor us, and everyone in the topic is celebrating the fact that China HODLs 1% of the supply.

Considering that they hold 1%, that does not seem a lot but I think if you have that much then you might have the ability to influence the market. The scary thing about this is that China is proactive when it comes to acquiring bitcoin, this might be the tip of the iceberg.

[Vishnu.Reang]

This is similar to what the FBI did after seizing Bitcoins from the Silk Road dark market. In all probability, they will auction these coins. Imagine this - the Chinese governments auctioning cryptocurrency using their own platform, when trading of cryptocurrency (vs fiat) is banned in China. That would give rise to some uncomfortable questions to the authorities. They need to circumvent the very laws that were set by them.

[ranochigo]

Of course it's good news. The scheme is stopped and the funds aren't going to the scammers anymore.

I guess this implies that the government control 1% of the Bitcoin's total supply. But remember, the amount that they potentially seized is just a tiny fraction of their GDP. It is honestly just pocket change for them and they're probably going to just auction it off or hold onto it, which is great no matter how you look at it.

[KnightElite]

I am happy that a ponzi scam got busted and the Chinese police did a good job here. But the thing I don’t like that, this news released when bitcoin was pumping. As they seized 1% of bitcoin, it really affected the market and the market crashed.

And another thing is if Chinese government release those funds on exchangers it will be a huge dump on the market. Because the amount is huge and it can be happen anytime.

It is really a great news because finally the scammers got busted by the law enforcers, the number of scammers are continuing to increase as the time passing by and it is so sad that there are a lot of people are continuing to get scammed but for me it is their fault because they let other people to fool them. I'm just thinking if in what way the police officers of the China will use the cryptocurrencies that they seized in their past operations. For me there is a high chanve that they can use it to increase their yearly budget.

[Pmalek]

I don't know if this is good news or not.  

It is bad news. The only thing that is good is that a big group of ponzi scammers got caught.

Another question arises - are the Chinese authorities planning to sell these bitcoins or not?  

It's very unlikely they will hold auctions and allow their citizens and Chinese investors to buy the seized coins. The coins will get liquidated, exchanged for yuans (fiat), and placed in the national treasury. This will lower the supply of bitcoin and the value will drop a bit. But I don't think it will have a significant impact on the price.

[Wind_FURY]

Here I am starting to worry about institutions starting to HODL a large percentage of Bitcoins, large enough to censor us, and everyone in the topic is celebrating the fact that China HODLs 1% of the supply.

Considering that they hold 1%, that does not seem a lot but I think if you have that much then you might have the ability to influence the market. The scary thing about this is that China is proactive when it comes to acquiring bitcoin, this might be the tip of the iceberg.

Then have a large percentage enough held by the custodians, and > 50% of users' transactions through them, I believe Bitcoin as a censorship-resistant cryptocurrency has failed. What use then will POW be?

[Ratash]

Yes its good news for the price because those 1% from circulating supply will be frosen because the chinese goverment is not fond of bitcoin as we know there is a big demand on bitcoin and with circulating supply decreasing the price will go up or maybe they will use it as leverage because the us goverment has a  big supply of bitcoin too.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2013/10/03/what-do-the-fbi-do-with-3-million-bitcoins.html

[buwaytress]

It will be all used for the glory and the happiness of all the nation, reminds me of that scene from Chernobyl. But it will be interesting to see how will they exchange them for yuans, wiouht breaking their own laws.  

Funny, I was thinking of the same. China isn't quite like that, but yeah, still interesting to see what they'll do, if we'll ever be allowed to find out;)

But again, we see another proof that some scammers are idiots:

It really does seem that people who have a lot of money have really poor judgments. I seriously hope I don't suddenly become stupid overnight if Bitcoin goes to $1 million!

I started to appreciate that coin, no drama behind the founders, no premine, fast and cheap to use, accepted on almost all exchanges, even a few ATMs, a proof that simple things are what's needed, no fancy dapps and contracts and during cancer and all that other advertised crap.

Precisely. You don't need to be a fancy token economics professor from Ivy League, don't need suits and ties to back up your claims. Don't need to save the world with your vision of decentralization.

Get the community on board, get your message straight, do what you're supposed to do, it takes off and lives on.

[bonjouros]

This money is quite large, I can consider it as good news if the Chinese police will return the money to over two million people who originally owned it because if this amount will be dump then it will surely affect the market for sure.

National treasury means they will surely convert the crypto into their local fiats if I am not mistaken, I will just hope that it will not create a big impact to the crypto market especially that we are still in the process of triggering the bull season.

[yhiaali3]

Good news for discovering the fraudulent Ponzi scheme and returning assets to people who have been deceived, but I do not know how this will reflect on the market that is already suffering these days, no one knows how the Chinese government will act with these assets, but it is possible to return them to their owners and thus will be pumped again To the cryptocurrency market, of course, pumping this large amount to the market in one go could lead to an increase in the supply of these currencies and a decrease in their prices.

[TheBeardedBaby]

There was another news like that with 200 000 BTC confiscated from the police a few years ago, but nothing came out of it. We never heard anything anymore about those coins, and that was a massive one too. I guess this is what is going to happen again, and speaking of China, we wont hear about those coins at all.
It won't change the market as they won't sell the coins on the public exchanges. Someone with a lot of money will get himself some a cheap coins and the Communist's Party will be happy.

[bryant.coleman]

There was another news like that with 200 000 BTC confiscated from the police a few years ago, but nothing came out of it. We never heard anything anymore about those coins, and that was a massive one too. I guess this is what is going to happen again, and speaking of China, we wont hear about those coins at all.
It won't change the market as they won't sell the coins on the public exchanges. Someone with a lot of money will get himself some a cheap coins and the Communist's Party will be happy.

I guess that news was from 2017. Some of the countries don't want to reveal details about the seized assets and this is not just applicable to cryptocurrency. There is another chance that the information is being withheld, as the investigation is ongoing. Anyway, I would assume that the Bulgarian authorities are still holding most of these coins. Things move very slowly in these ex-Communist nations. It may take another decade for them to decide what to do with these seized assets.