Shockingly the US government still has 41.5k BTC ($1B) to sell before this year ends in three months. Be ready for some real volatility.

I think many may still vaguely remember the event of early this year, where the US government suddenly sold about 10k BTC on the market. There was quite some doom and gloom around it, until it got clear that the BTC were just part of their Silk Road sizing, later it was also revealed that the US would pledge to sell the remaining 41.5k BTC from the seizing in this current year.

And while there have been quite many false alarms spreading FUD in the previous months about a US government sale, the blockchain data shows that there is yet some sizable sale to be made by the US government. 

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Chart showing the US Government Bitcoin balance, it is an old chart, but the numbers are still about the same

Here we can see how the US government is still sitting on their $1B worth of BTC that are yet to be sold and that in just the remaining 3 months. A $1B sell pressure that only has three months left to drop on the market, there will indeed be quite some FUD around this in the coming weeks…

Initially the thought was that the US government would be smart enough to split this over the whole year and there would literally be zero effect on the market prices, but now it seems like they have not taken the SEC classes about market manipulation… 

Anyways, this will not be the end of the world as even a 41k BTC sale in just one day, which is unlikely, would be “just” about double the BTC trading volume. So if they go this extreme route there will be quite a considerable effect on the prices. Let's hope the US government actually knows their own laws and maybe even postpone those sales to next year.

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50 thoughts on “Shockingly the US government still has 41.5k BTC ($1B) to sell before this year ends in three months. Be ready for some real volatility.”

  1. Why you gotta piss in my cereal like that.. I was hoping for a good month in October.

  2. They held this long, what’s the reasoning behind selling it all now? Not like they need the money since they can print it, why not wait till the prices up

  7. I’ll take those BTC of their hands, no worries. Well… at least a part of it! Like 0.0017 BTC or so!

  13. That’s really not that much Bitcoin to impact price, as long as the US Government doesn’t do a market sell order all at once.

    Even if they did, it will just wick down and come back up.

  16. Do they have to sell? Or is it optional?

    Would recommend to hold a little longer, lol

  18. IF that causes a fluctuation, then we got a problem. It’s just a small fraction of what’s out there.

    1. Most probably it will get postponed.

    2. They won’t dump it all at once so no flash crash.

    3. They won’t sell it on exchanges which will crash market, they will OTC sell it to some big player.

    4. Even if they sold all at once and it crashed the market, it’s not that huge amount, expect a flash crash and instant recovery in a day or week.

  21. If they think an ETF approval is going through then they won’t sell, as that would likely boost the value of btc. If they sell.. we’ll.. ETF’s might not get pssed

  22. In the grand scheme of things this is nothing. If they dumped the whole lot at once it may create a panic but will be stable again in a matter of weeks.

    Sell now if you need money quickly, or like me HODL and forget about mainstream media spin.

  24. There is going to be an OTC sale. No sane person would write off a market sell of that many BTC

  25. The US do not sell bitcoin on the open market they sell it OTC or even at auction. Just like when they sold a bunch of bitcoin to Tim Draper they will divide it up into blocks and sell it to individual buyers so this bitcoin will never see exchanges and therefore never affect the spot price.

    All that will happen is the bitcoin will move from one holder to another off of the books.

  26. If the sell causes fluctuation in price of Bitcoin, then that will be a good opportunity for me to even acquire more Bitcoin.

  27. Maybe the US government is taking a long-term view on crypto and believes that the value of Bitcoin will increase over time. It’s also possible that the government has other plans for the Bitcoin that it has seized.

  29. Here we go again. lol

    So sick of seeing the same old threads over and over and over and over like something is new or not baked in.

  30. Seems like every few months there’s a post about some massive sale of Bitcoin coming up. Promises of some giant sell off.

    Whether it’s some giant whale wallet, some seized coins, some major miner, a major fund or company, or a government that has to sell ungodly amount of coins.

    I’ve seen so many of these in the last 5 years.

    And 90% of the time, we don’t get that big sell off that was promised. So I wouldn’t be too quick on hitting the short button just yet, or bet on sub $20K BTC.

    It would make for some real big opportunity to scoop up cheap coin on brief volatility, and maybe even a flash crash. But I don’t think we’ll be that lucky.

  31. To bad they can’t wait for the market to rise, sell it and then put it towards the National Debt.

  37. The U.S. Gov’t fiscal year ends this month, though…not on the calendar year’s end…

  43. As I recall this wasn’t legally binding so they may or may not do it.

  44. ~1/10 of the daily transactions.

    Sure, the dumb will panic sell, exaggerating a minor drop, but it will shake it off almost immediately.

  46. So that’s 1/520….i think we’ll be alright even if they just dump it.

  47. Am I the only one who saw the chart? Not even the OP saw it? Im assuming the left y axis is the US btc balance, and right y axis is the price. Which means US gov still has more than 160k btc to sell

  48. Government fiscal year ends on 30 Sept. No federal agencies use the end of December as a year end.

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