I don't know if you still remember, according to a press release issued by the South East European Law Enforcement Center, in May 2017, Bulgaria seized 200,000 bitcoins from a criminal gang.
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“The Bulgarian authorities discovered more than 200,000 bitcoins worth 500 million U.S. dollars at the time,” it said, adding:
“Members of this organized criminal group invested money from illegal activities into Bitcoin, and the authorities discovered about 200,000 bitcoins.”
They did not provide more details on how these bitcoins were discovered, but the statement said:
“The authorities have searched more than 100 addresses, suspects and vehicles. They have confiscated a large amount of money and equipment, communications equipment, computers, tablets, bank documents, etc. 23 suspects were arrested, 5 of whom were Bulgarian customs officers.”
Therefore, the private key of these coins may come from one of the computers, but the Bulgarian authorities refused to disclose the public bitcoin address, saying the investigation is still in progress.
According to the data, there is currently no Bitcoin address in excess of 120,000 Bitcoin, but of course, Bitcoin can be stored in different addresses. The 200,000 Bitcoins are likely to be scattered under multiple different addresses.
Since this happened in May 2017, this means that the Bulgarian authorities also have 213,519 Bitcoin Cash (BCH), because in August 2017, Bitcoin forks gave birth to Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
These two currencies add up to a current value of $1.7 billion. If Bitcoin appreciates 10 times from now on, Bulgaria's bitcoin reserves will be more than the UK's gold reserves, which are estimated to be $12.8 billion.
In contrast, the US government sold 144,336 bitcoins at a low price between 2015 and 2016, earning only $50 million.
