Apparently this week the German government has just finished selling off their Bitcoin stash of nearly 50,000 BTC for almost $3 billion. This along with Trump’s surge in the polls after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, his failed assassination attempt, and VP pick is probably part of the reason why Bitcoin prices are starting to come back up again after being stuck at around $57,000 for days.

Now, a lot of Bitcoiners will agree with me that this was an incredibly short-sighted decision. By selling their bitcoins for fiat, governments are trading a scarce asset enforced by mathematics and cryptography that has the potential to be the future world’s reserve currency for a bunch of paper that they could print themselves at will. Only 21 million bitcoins can ever be created versus a potentially unlimited amount of dollars or euros or renminbi, which is why you often see charts like this (click to expand):

In fact, governments continue to hoard gold reserves decades after abandoning the gold standard but Bitcoin still seems to go over their heads. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising considering that the average age of a politician in the Western world is close to 60. Or perhaps they don’t care because the coins were “seized” (a.k.a. stolen) by government thugs rather than being earned with hard work like the rest of us and were thus obtained for free.

So far, the El Salvadorian government seems to be the only government that is acting in its own self-interest. They have been accumulating BTC at a steady rate since 2021, have weathered the storms, and are now completely in the green:

In the German Bundestag, only MP Joana Cotar seems to realize that might have been better for their government to hold onto its bitcoins. Cotar reflected, “I can only speculate as to why the government is selling right now. As we have massive budget shortfalls in Germany at the moment, that could be one of the reasons. The upcoming elections may also play a role.”

She added, “We need to diversify our treasury and finally see and hold bitcoin as a strategic reserve currency. It is really frustrating to have to watch politicians who have no idea about the matter squander a great opportunity.”

Not that I’m complaining though. Governments selling cryptocurrencies distributes wealth to the people – the good kind of wealth that can’t be inflated and confiscated at will.

In 2014, the US government sold 30,000 bitcoins for $19 million at a price of $630 per coin. Had they waited until now, that stash would be worth $1.8 billion. In 1999, the UK government sold half of its gold reserves for $3.5 billion. Today it would be worth over $30 billion. In 10 years, the German government will probably look back at its decision to sell its bitcoins and realize that it had made the same short-sighted mistake.