• The Chinese government holds more BTC than MicroStrategy.
• Speculation shows that the Chinese government might have other BTC assets partly obtained from the PlusToken scam.

According to recent reports, the Chinese government is one of the largest BTC holders in the world. In a tweet by Ki Young Ju, CEO of CryptoQuant, the Chinese government holds more BTC than the popular BTC whale, MicroStrategy.

More details show that the Chinese authorities remitted 194,775 BTC, 833,083 ETH, 487 million XRP, 79,581 BCH, 1.4 million LTC, 27.6 million EOS, 74,167 DASH, 6 billion DOGE, and 213,724 USDT from the 2019 PlusToken scam. The Chinese police force seized these assets from the PlusToken Ponzi scheme in China.

PlusToken started as a cryptocurrency wallet in 2018. The Ponzi defrauded over 2 million investors from Asia and other regions of the world. Almost 200K BTC was carted away from these investors. PlusToken baited credulous investors using a pyramid scheme that rewarded users with a 30 percent ROI for holding their crypto asset.

Further investigations reveal that the team paid existing customers from the deposit of new investors. As a result of this, many PlusToken users experienced withdrawal issues.

While the Chinese government has over 194K Bitcoin, MicroStrategy owns only 130,000 BTC. The world’s number one BTC whale company purchased its asset at an average price of $30,623 per BTC. MicroStrategy splashed a total of $3.981B on BTC. Other companies like Galaxy Digital Holdings, Voyager Digital LTD, Tesla Inc., and Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. are BTC whales with over 10,000 BTC in possession. 

The Chinese Government fighting cryptocurrency despite holding large amounts of BTC

The CEO of CryptoQuant said the PlusToken team was responsible for the recurring Bitcoin price drop during the looting period. BTC price was affected because the team continually swapped the looted funds through over-the-counter (OTC) platforms. In Ki Young Ju’s tweet, he added;

We’ve been tracking down their wallets since 2019. It sucks to see the market goes down due to these villains. I hate these scammers so much… You might be the same.

He buttressed that some of the culprits are still actively sending BTC to exchanges on the same mixer. According to CrptoQuant, an on-chain crypto analytic firm, a transaction of 50 BTC was initiated on the mixer recently. 

The Chinese crypto asset revelation generated a lot of reactions from the Twitter community. A user asked what would happen to BTC if the Chinese authority sells the asset while another complained that the presence of the Chinese government is spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) in the crypto space. Another reaction speculated that China had seized several other crypto assets aside from the PlusToken scam.

However, the Chinese government has taken several measures against crypto firms and trading platforms. The government has placed a ban on other crypto-related platforms and news agencies. The global crypto community dreads further government restrictions as China hosts the majority of crypto miners. Furthermore, a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) for crypto has been established in China to oversee monetary control.