Will the new Labour Government sell UK Bitcoin holdings? | Bitcoin News by CoinCorner

Transcript

This week, a small English football team buys $4.5 million worth of Bitcoin. Mt. Gox creditors have finally been distributed some of their lost funds, and there are rumours circulating that the Trump administration is considering Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset.

Looking first at Bitcoin's price: this week, we've seen Bitcoin steady and appear to consolidate between $66,000 and $67,000 a coin. This comes after a strong rebound last week, where the price made it past $68,500 per coin over the weekend. One contributing factor to these weekend gains is the Microsoft outage and global IT shut down, which took place on Friday, 17th July. The outage disrupted numerous sectors, including traditional finance, causing widespread challenges for businesses and services reliant on Microsoft technologies. Triggered by a CrowdStrike software update, the incident effectively incapacitated millions of PCs globally, exposing the vulnerabilities inherent in centralised technological frameworks. Following this chaos, CrowdStrike has confirmed that a significant number of the PCs affected have been restored and are back online. However, this event shed light on the resilience of decentralised technologies, such as Bitcoin, which continued to operate smoothly without interruption. On the day of the outage, we saw Bitcoin's price react by surging over 6%, which could indicate that the market is starting to view Bitcoin as a safe haven asset and a reliable alternative to the conventional system.

Our next story is coming from the failed crypto exchange, Mt. Gox, which this week began to distribute funds to creditors who lost out when the exchange was hacked nearly 11 years ago. Over the last few months, since the announcement of the $9 billion distribution of digital assets, the market has had some concern that this could impact Bitcoin's price, assuming creditors will sell their coins once they're received. However, in a poll on Reddit, made up of 467 creditors, only 19% said that they plan on selling all of their distribution, while 55% said they plan to hold all of it and refrain from selling anything. The remainder suggested they would sell a portion of their returned holdings.

Now, this poll does provide some optimism for the market; however, the data is somewhat limited as the poll had such a small number of participants, and it is suggested that people have a motivation to lie about their choice to keep the price high, even if they do intend on selling. But this week, according to data from Arkham, Mt. Gox has already transferred around 50,000 Bitcoin, worth approximately $2.8 billion, back to some of their clients, and currently, the price seems to be remaining stable. This could suggest that the survey is somewhat accurate. However, Mt. Gox still holds around 990,000 Bitcoin, worth approximately $5.7 billion, and once further coins are distributed, this could potentially have a more significant impact on the market.

More potentially concerning news for Bitcoin's price action is coming from the UK government, where there is a rising concern that the new Labour government could follow in Germany's footsteps by selling off their vast Bitcoin holdings to fund the party's plans. The UK is currently the third-largest Bitcoin holder by country, with a total balance of around 61,000 Bitcoin, worth approximately $4 billion. Most of this was accumulated by the seizure of funds in a money laundering case against hospitality worker Jian Wen and other criminal cases. It's thought that the recently appointed UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, may have the option of liquidating the Bitcoin holdings as part of the Labour government's plans to promote economic stability and growth by prioritising building affordable housing and improving the nation's rail system.

That being said, the Prime Minister has largely been silent on crypto, but Shadow City Minister and Shadow Economic Secretary Tulip Siddiq suggested that she intends to crack down on crypto regulations in a post on X back in 2023. However, at this time, this is all relatively speculative, and nothing has been confirmed.

One country, on the other hand, that may be set to take the opposite approach to Bitcoin is the United States. This week, there have been a lot of rumours going around that presidential candidate Donald Trump, who is set to speak at the Bitcoin conference over the weekend, could announce Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset if he gets elected later this year. Dennis Porter, co-founder and CEO of the Satoshi Action Fund, said he got this information from credible sources, and this has now also been reported on mainstream media outlets in the US, such as Fox and CNBC. If true, this would be a watershed moment that would validate Bitcoin's digital gold narrative. It could potentially boost Bitcoin's price, attract new investors, and increase its legitimacy. According to estimates, the US currently holds around 213,000 Bitcoin, making up 1% of the total supply, and it's thought that they could leverage this asset as a commodity. However, an exact strategy is still unknown, and we'll have to wait patiently for Trump's keynote speech on Saturday.

Now, our final story is coming from a small English football team, Real Bedford, who have been making headlines ever since Bitcoin podcaster Peter McCormack took over the team back in 2021. This week, in a post on X, Peter announced that the team had acquired 66.9 Bitcoin for an average price of $67,120 per coin. As of today, Real Bedford holds 82.7 Bitcoin, acquired for an average price of around $64,925 per coin. Since taking over the 10th-tier team, McCormack's plan has always been to get Real Bedford promoted all the way up to the Premier League through the support of the Bitcoin community and using Bitcoin as a treasury asset. There is still a long way to go, but since then, the team has been promoted twice this year to the eighth-tier league. Earlier this year, they also received $4.5 million worth of investment from now co-owners Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, founders of the crypto exchange Gemini, who are also long-term sponsors of the team.