The international Bitcoin community has been shocked by the news that a relatively small European country named Bulgaria (the national GDP was 52,4 billion dollars in 2016) make force Bitcoin into crashing!
To be more specific there are rumors on the Internet that the local government of this Balkan country owns over 213 000 BTC, which is currently estimated at 3,5-4 billion dollars. This is enough to cover 18% of Bulgaria’s national debt.
How come the Bulgarian government owns 1,25 of the global Bitcoin stack to date? They say the digital currency was taken away from the hacker group that had been arrested for hacking the local customs service’s servers and helping their clients evade customs duties.
They arrested 23 hackers with loads of cash, hardware, banking data and docs, and of course 213K Bitcoins. It’s clear that the criminals accepted the digital currency to remain anonymous. There is no denying the fact that criminals like cryptocurrencies. Back then, the arrested Bitcoin stack cost around 500 million dollars. Since Bitcoin has been growing in value like never before, the stack now cost around 4 billion dollars, experts say.
At this point, it's unclear how the Bulgarian government is planning to spend the Bitcoin stack. On the one hand, it’s tempting to catch at the chance to spend the money in order to cover a certain part of the national debt. On the other hand, them can wait for a while and if the rally continues, the stack will definitely grow in value even more. Moreover, there is no legal framework in Bulgaria when it comes to cryptocurrencies. If it’s up to legislators to decide, they are usually slow to think and make decisions.
Still, Bulgaria car really undermine the Bitcoin rally if they decide to cash out. Even though the stock is relatively insignificant – just 1,2% of the global stack, if they decide to put 213K BTC on sale at once, this is going to bring the exchange rate down a lot, especially as BTC futures now give big players the right to short Bitcoin.
Well, we’ll wait and see…
