New evidence suggests that China may have sold all of the 194,000 bitcoin (BTC) it holds in reserve after seizing the money held by the Plustoken Ponzi scheme in 2019.

According to on-chain data analyzed by CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju, the funds were reportedly moved that same year, although the Chinese government never officially reported on the transactions and the possible sale of the holdings. In this regard, he points out that cryptocurrency mixers and centralized exchanges, such as Huobi, were used to get rid of the bitcoin.

As noted on X Ki Young Ju, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has only said that the funds were “transferred to the national treasury,” without clarifying whether they were sold. In his post, the executive provided a detailed breakdown of the on-chain data.

“The CCP hasn’t confirmed a sale, which is why people are still talking about the 194,000 BTC. But the on-chain data tells a different story: they sold everything. I trust the on-chain, not the CCP,” Young said.

This claim is supported by data from Valkyrie Research, which shows that China’s reserves began to decline rapidly between August and December 2019. By the end of that year, they had fallen below 50,000 BTC.

When China seized the 194,000 BTC, the market value was roughly $4 billion. Today, the bitcoin hoard would be worth a staggering sum of nearly $20 billion. According to Young, “it seems unlikely that a censored regime would possess censorship-resistant money.”

The Chinese government established a ban on bitcoin in 2021. Despite this, the fact that the authorities maintained the reserve in BTC has always been highlighted and will be among the main whales in the market. 

If the sale of BTC from China is confirmed, the United States would remain the country with the largest amount of bitcoin in the world, but without competition from the Asian country. According to data from the Buy Bitcoin Worldwide platform, the second place among governments with BTC would be occupied by the United Kingdom.