German government offloads its final Bitcoin holdings

Germany’s government offloaded the last of its Bitcoin holdings on July 12, according to data from Arkham Intelligence. The final transaction included 3,846 Bitcoin sent to “Flow Traders and 139Po,” which Arkham described as “likely institutional deposit/OTC service.” The transaction followed weeks of increased selling pressure from the German government, which offloaded tens of thousands of Bitcoin in several tranches. Most of the 50,000 Bitcoin dumped by the German government over the last three weeks resulted from an asset seizure and was largely responsible for keeping the market below the $60,000 price point and its 200-day exponential moving average.

Institutional selling pressure suppresses the market

Despite the German government exhausting their Bitcoin reserves, selling pressure from the $9 billion Mt. Gox reimbursement plan may keep the price of Bitcoin suppressed in the coming weeks and sustain the climate of fear, uncertainty, and doubt that has plagued the market in recent months. Analyst Jacob King believes that investors seeking windfall profits could sell up to 99% of Mt. Gox’s $8.2 billion. The exchange collapsed in 2014 when the price of Bitcoin was still trading for hundreds of dollars. Conversely, IG Markets analyst Tony Sycamore believes the Mt. Gox payments will not have the disastrous effect on markets that many investors anticipate. According to Sycamore, there are too many factors at play to determine the behavior of the Mt. Gox creditors. The analyst predicted that half of the reimbursement supply could hit exchanges sometime this July. Still, the analyst was confident the reimbursement was already priced into the Bitcoin market. Sycamore told Cointelegraph that news of the reimbursement plan was known by investors for a long time and is not a surprise.

Institutional investors buy the dip

During the heightened selling pressure, institutional investors bought the dip. Data from CoinShares revealed that United States exchange-traded funds (ETFs) raked in $295 million in inflows for the week of July 8, reversing several weeks of suppressed inflows into the investment funds.