50,000 Bitcoin from Movie2K: Germany is suddenly one of the largest Bitcoin owners

2024-01-31 16:42:00

Worth two billion euros 50,000 Bitcoin from Movie2K: Germany is suddenly one of the largest Bitcoin owners

Anyone who invested in Bitcoin early on could become very rich

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At its peak, the piracy site Movie2K made millions in sales. Then she was picked up by the police. Part of the income has now been handed over to the authorities. Their value has exploded since then.

It was a land of milk and honey for film and series fans. Long before the streaming boom really started in Germany with Netflix, tons of Germans were already streaming the latest Hollywood blockbusters and US series. There was just one small problem: the popular offers Movie2K and Kinox were – of course – illegal. In 2013 the handcuffs clicked. Ten years later, the closure brought an unexpected windfall.

A defendant voluntarily handed over almost 50,000 Bitcoin at the beginning of the year, the Dresden public prosecutor’s office and the Saxony LKA reported on Tuesday. The man has been in custody since 2019 and is said to have operated Movie2K together with another defendant until 2013. In addition to purchasing real estate, the money collected from subscription traps and advertising was also used to purchase cryptocurrency – as a form of money laundering, as investigators believe.

Steep increase in value

Since then, the coins have increased significantly in value. When the network was dismantled in 2013, the Bitcoin price was 100 euros, so the coins were worth around 500,000 euros. The price is now almost 40,000 euros. The digital wallet that has now been handed over to the police is worth almost two billion euros.

Even compared to the general Bitcoin market, this is an enormous amount. With 50,000 coins, the wallet is one of the 15 largest wallets worldwide – and holds more coins than some crypto exchanges. Almost 0.25 percent of all coins ever created are now in the hands of the German state.

What happens to Bitcoin?

What exactly happens with the money is still unclear. The coins are currently part of the ongoing criminal proceedings against the two accused. If they are convicted, the state could actually auction off the coins. This happened after a trial in North Rhine-Westphalia. There, 215 auctioned Bitcoins were even sold above the current market value.

The German state benefits from the fact that the legal situation in this country does not provide for the payment of profits to the perpetrators. In Sweden, a court had to transfer over one million euros to a dealer in 2021: the public prosecutor’s office had documented the value of the coins in real money – and had to return everything above that (you can read the entire story here).

Sources:Police Saxony, Bitinfocharts