UPDATE: German government continues bitcoin transfers, moves $638 million to various entities

The German government has once again resumed transferring bitcoins to centralized exchanges and other market entities with the presumed intent to sell on Wednesday.

At around 9 a.m. UTC, authorities transferred more than 1,127 bitcoins ($66.2 million) to an address identified as belonging to Flow Traders by the onchain analytics platform Arkham. 500 bitcoins ($29.4 million) were also sent to crypto exchange Coinbase, while another 750 bitcoins ($44.1 million) were sent to rival exchange Kraken. At the same time, Arkham also identified Cumberland DRW as receiving more than 536 bitcoins ($31.5 million) from the German government. Additionally, an address labeled as potentially belonging to B2C2 Group received some 2,250 bitcoins ($132.2 million), while a further 690 bitcoins ($40.5 million) were sent to an unlabeled address.

In a later set of transfers at around 10:30 a.m. UTC, the German government sent another 3,000 bitcoins ($176.3 million) to Flow Traders, 1,000 bitcoins ($58.8 million) to B2C2 Group, 375 bitcoins ($22 million) to Kraken and 375 bitcoins ($22 million) to Coinbase. It also sent a further 250 bitcoins ($14.7 million) to the same unlabeled address.

In total, the German government has apparently transferred out more than 10,853 bitcoins on Wednesday, worth $637.7 million. It still holds around 13,110 bitcoins, worth more than $767 million, according to Arkham.

The latest transfers align with the German government's strategy to offload 50,000 confiscated bitcoins it seized from the now-defunct film piracy website Movie2K in January. Recent days and weeks have seen the German authorities send thousands of bitcoins to various entities, which sometimes send bitcoins back to the government — presumably because "they were unsold bitcoin as part of a sale agreement between the crypto exchange and the country," The Block's Research Director Steven Zheng said.

Germany's selling it hasn't proven popular with everyone in the country's government. Member of the German Bundestag and bitcoin advocate Joana Cotar criticized the government's decision to "hastily" sell the bitcoins it possesses in lieu of a comprehensive bitcoin strategy as "counterproductive."

Despite the widespread expectations that the German government will continue to sell its bitcoins, the price of the foremost cryptocurrency is up more than 1.6% on the day, changing hands for $58,435, according to The Block's Bitcoin Price Page. However, bitcoin's price remains down around 10% since the German government began moving funds to exchanges on June 18.

Updated with additional details throughout.