Uncle Sam: The Bitcoin Billionaire
Bitcoin is the talk of the town. And why not… Bitcoin had a splendid year with 158% growth in 2023 with a market cap of astounding $900 billion.
Do you know that Bitcoin has officially minted an estimated 70,000 new millionaires in 2023 alone and as of December 25, 2023 the total number of addresses holding a value of at least $1 million worth of Bitcoin stood at 97,280.
There’s no doubt that 2023 was a good year for Bitcoin Maxis with over 73 million Bitcoin wallets downloaded globally and an astounding 390,000 Bitcoin accumulated by whales is a testament to the growing importance and potential of this digital asset.
2023 also witnessed a significant shift in traditional financial institutions’ stance towards Bitcoin.
According to a recent CoinShares report, Cryptocurrency investment products experienced more inflows in 2023, with BTC having over $1.9 bn representing 86% of the total institutional investment.
Owning Bitcoin is a dream to many investors, including Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy. In fact, it is the biggest corporate player in the market right now, holding the highest amount of cryptocurrency.
However, there is one uncle who holds even more bitcoin than MicroStrategy. Yes, I am talking about Uncle Sam! The US government is in possession of 207,189 bitcoins!
Meanwhile, MicroStrategy has acquired 189,150 BTC and they are now working on ways to add more.
The US potentially holds the world’s largest government bitcoin stash, surpassing El Salvador, Ukraine, Bhutan, Venezuela, and Finland combined.
Whereas, China, seizing 195,000 BTC in 2020, could rival the US if it hasn’t sold its holdings early.
You must be wondering how US government got hold of the bitcoins, well, they confiscated the bitcoins from the following three dubious sources — The infamous dark web marketplace Silk Road, its hacker Jimmy Zhong, and the hackers responsible for the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange hack were all connected to these bitcoins.
The recent spike in the cryptocurrency’s value proved beneficial for the U.S. government coffers.
According to the most recent data, the Federal authorities’ Bitcoin holdings have increased significantly from the $5 billion announced less than three months ago to at least $8.3 billion.
You need to login in order to Like
