Justin Sun Proposes Buying German Government’s Bitcoin OTC To Minimize Market Impact

Tron founder and crypto billionaire Justin Sun offered to purchase Bitcoin directly from the German government to prevent the offloading of its cryptocurrency holdings onto the open market.

Justin Sun’s Offer To Germany

Sun’s offer follows two weeks of persistent Bitcoin sales from the state, which analysts believe has helped push Bitcoin’s price down 19% to $56,849 over the last month.

I am willing to negotiate with the German government to purchase all BTC off-market in order to minimize the impact on the market.

— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) July 4, 2024

Justin Sun’s proposal, delivered via X on Thursday, proposed an off-market purchase of all the German government’s Bitcoin. He stated his goal was to “minimize the impact on the market.”

The offer marks another attempt from Sun to hold the line when crypto prices trend towards critical lows.

The mogul temporarily protected Curve founder Michael Egorov’s systemic CRV loan from liquidation, and at one point considered buying FTX’s digital assets to protect the market from the bankruptcy’s liquidation proceedings.

This time around, sell pressure is mounting from the German government, which has begun offloading a mountain of 50,000 BTC that it seized from the operators of film piracy website Movie2k.to back in January.

Overwhelming Bitcoin Sales

According to Arkham, on June 19 at 16:47 UTC+8, the German Government transferred a total of 1,000 BTC (500 BTC each) to Kraken Deposit and Bitstamp exchanges, worth about $65.14 million. There are currently 47.859k BTC in the German Government address, worth about $3.1 billion.…

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) June 20, 2024

Blockchain analysts at Arkham first detected the German government moving its BTC between wallets on June 19, with many of those coins likely deposited to exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and BitStamp.

Sales to those same exchanges resumed again on Thursday, with the government transferring another 1300 BTC ($76 million) to those venues.

It also transferred another 1700 BTC ($99 million) to an unidentified address, which Arkham claims is likely a deposit to an institutional or over-the-counter (OTC) service.

Arkham’s dashboard shows that the German government still holds 40,359 BTC worth $2.31 billion at writing time.

Aside from Germany, fears are mounting among investors around Mt. Gox – the defunct Bitcoin exchange whose bankruptcy is waiting to distribute 141,000 BTC to creditors.

The exchange has announced that it will begin distributions this month, though no signs of actual distributions have appeared yet.

What’s more, on-chain analysis shows that Bitcoin miners sold Bitcoin at a rapid pace in June as post-halving revenue cuts put pressure on their business models. The network’s total hashrate is down 7.7% from its peak in April.

“Historically, an extreme hash rate drawdown has been associated with price bottoming conditions,” CryptoQuant wrote in a Wednesday market report.