To those that wrote that "Germany tries to manipulate the market" and similar stuff:
These 50k
BTC as we all know were coins from a criminal proceeding from the LKA Saxony, coins sized from Movie2k.to. And this means that normally there is an established, standarized procedure to sell those items. Well, Bitcoins may not often be seized this way, but real estate, cars, and so on are seized all the time, and thus there are laws and administrative decrees defining how such sales are done.
What I want to say with this is that there is no way for them to try to "speculate" with the coins, hoping for better prices, and much less "try to manipulate the market". Once the decision is made to sell, they have to sell. And as @cygan correctly wrote a big part was sold using OTC channels like FlowTraders.
An article about this "issue" has been published on
BTC-Echo but it's behind a paywall (I have not read it).
The only way to not sell would have been a law or decree to change the procedure in these cases. This is what a German lawmaker called Joana Coatar
tried to achieve some days ago, but it was of course WAY too late. She should have done this in January when the coins were seized.
Well, Germany has now run dry, and the price has barely moved during their selloff. The 53k dump was very likely not caused by them (it occurred during Asian trading hours, and the LKA Saxony wallet had moved only a small fraction at this moment) but by a panic triggered by the first MtGox coin movements, and subsequent long liquidations under the 59k and 56.5k support levels.