The German government may have failed to recover at least 45,000 Bitcoin during its crackdown on movie piracy platform Movie2k, according to new data uncovered by crypto intelligence platform Arkham. According to a Friday report , Arkham has discovered over 45,000 Bitcoin—roughly $5 billion at current prices—still sitting in wallets that, according to their analysis, are tied to Movie2K’s operators. These coins, Arkham says, are split across more than 100 wallets and haven’t moved since 2019. That fact alone raises flags, given how aggressively German prosecutors moved to liquidate the last batch of seized Bitcoin just months ago. “This is most likely still under the control of the Movie2K operators,” Arkham wrote, adding that the addresses were connected to earlier transactions stemming from the site. Strikingly, this stash was not referenced by German authorities at any point during or after their headline-making seizure earlier this year. Arkham’s platform shows no outbound transactions from the 45,060 BTC linked to the piracy ring, no recent movement, no inclusion in the liquidation trail, nothing. As for now, Arkham researchers are unsure whether this was an oversight, a lack of visibility, or legal ambiguity in how these funds were identified and potentially overlooked. At Bitcoin’s peak of $124,128 in August, the wallet would’ve held nearly $5.6 billion. Even at today’s more subdued price near $111,000, the holdings are worth just shy of $5 billion. Germany seized roughly 50k BTC from Movie2k The original investigation goes back over a decade. German prosecutors had been pursuing operators of Movie2k.to, a once-popular movie piracy site, for years. The case finally turned a corner in early 2024, when two suspects agreed to a “voluntary transfer” of 49,858 BTC to authorities. That transfer occurred in mid-January, and the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) quickly began securing and cataloguing the assets. At the time, prosecutors called the seizure the largest in German history and among the most comprehensive globally. But as Arkham’s new report suggests, that narrative may have been premature. If the remaining 45,000 BTC are conclusively tied to Movie2K, the state may have missed out on a second massive seizure opportunity, one nearly equal in value to the original . In July 2024, the German government completed a multi-week selling spree , offloading the full 49,858 BTC it held across exchanges such as Coinbase, Bitstamp, Flow Traders, and Kraken. The sales occurred between early June and mid-July 2024, fetching an average price of around $57,900 per coin, which brought in an estimated $2.8 billion. However, the large-scale sell-offs drew criticism from both German lawmakers and participants in the broader crypto market. At the time, Reflexivity Research co-founder Will Clemente called the decision “one of the biggest strategic blunders in history,” noting that holding the BTC just a few months longer could have nearly doubled Germany’s windfall. Is Bitcoin price at risk? Before German authorities can recover the newly discovered funds, they’ll need to clear a new legal hurdle. Prosecutors must prove in court that the wallets are indeed linked to Movie2K and were funded through illicit proceeds. But even that wouldn’t guarantee complete recovery. First, the government would have to locate and obtain control of more than 100 wallets. That could take months, if not years, and any move to do so might tip off whoever still controls them. The post German authorities reportedly missed $5B in BTC from Movie2K case appeared first on Invezz
