Author: Wenser, Odaily

There are less than 2 weeks until Donald Trump takes office as the President of the United States, and he may announce a series of governance policies on his first day of inauguration on January 20. Among the many speculations, the "whether Trump will promote the establishment of a Bitcoin national strategic reserve in the United States" has become a focus of attention. Odaily has compiled the main countries currently holding Bitcoin, helping readers to understand the current basic situation of the Bitcoin national strategic reserve plan in advance.

Bitcoin National Reserve Ranking: Four Echelons, Total Holdings Exceed 510,000 BTC

Overview of National BTC Reserve Data

First Echelon: The US and China Far Ahead

First of all, the "major holders" - the United States currently holds 198,109 BTC, worth $201.71 billion, accounting for about 0.94% of the total BTC supply; China holds 190,000 BTC, worth $193.45 billion, accounting for about 0.91% of the total BTC supply.

It is worth mentioning that according to the BitcoinTreasuries website, the US government's BTC holdings all come from the confiscated income of the previous Silk Road website, and Trump had previously promised to release the founder of Silk Road, Rose, after taking office, which may also become a major hype point; According to the source of the website, China's BTC holdings may mainly come from the PlusToken hacker incident that occurred in 2020, when about 194,000 BTC were confiscated, and it is believed that its BTC holdings may be far beyond this figure.

Second Echelon: The UK and Ukraine Follow Closely

Compared to the first echelon, the BTC holdings of the UK and Ukraine in the second echelon have decreased by an order of magnitude.

The former has 61,245 BTC, worth about $62.4 billion, and according to feedback, this batch of BTC mainly comes from confiscated funds, and the funds also come from China.

In January 2024, according to a report by the British media Skynews, a woman who previously worked as a food delivery worker in a Chinese restaurant was investigated after trying to buy a £23.5 million mansion in Hampstead, and the police later seized more than £1.4 billion worth of Bitcoin. It is understood that the 42-year-old Ms. Wen acted as a "straw man" to help the money launderer Zhi-min Wang deal with part of the profits from a £5 billion investment fraud case carried out in China from 2014 to 2017. At that time, the British police seized 61,000 BTC. Subsequently, according to on-chain data monitoring by the Arkham platform, the British government bought 245 BTC at an average price of $59,376 in September 2024, and the holdings have since grown to 61,245 BTC.

The latter has 46,351 BTC, worth about $47.2 billion. There is currently no accurate information on the specific source of Ukraine's BTC holdings, but it is based on the results of statistics from multiple channels, and it began to hold BTC on September 14, 2022, when the BTC price was only $20,185, compared to the current price of over $100,000, an increase of more than 400%. Combined with the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war at the beginning of 2022, we have reason to speculate that this holding may be partly derived from cryptocurrency donations.

Third Echelon: Bhutan and El Salvador Become Firm Holders

The third echelon of Bhutan and El Salvador are more like "national-level holding players".

Bhutan's BTC holdings mainly come from the mining income of the Bhutanese royal family, and it currently holds more than 11,000 BTC, worth $11.9 billion. It is worth mentioning that the Bhutanese royal family is not a "diamond hand" from the beginning, and has sold a small amount of BTC several times, and even sold 420 BTC at around $98,000 and 103 BTC at around $97,000 in December last year.

Compared to Bhutan, El Salvador is more like a "firm believer in holding" - not only has it been the first to implement the BTC national strategic reserve plan, it has been consistently implementing the "daily purchase of one BTC" plan; and there are also additional increases. The latest on-chain data shows that El Salvador's BTC holdings have grown to around 6,010, worth $6.12 billion.

Fourth Echelon: Venezuela, Finland, and Georgia Hold Small Amounts

The BTC holdings of the countries in the fourth echelon have suddenly dropped to the hundreds or even dozens.

Venezuela, as a Latin American country, has long been plagued by hyperinflation, and there have been incidents such as the Venezuelan president using cryptocurrency to circumvent US sanctions, the Venezuelan oil company accelerating the embrace of the USDT stablecoin, and the Venezuelan authorities seizing more than 11,000 Bitcoin mining machines and cutting off power to multiple mining sites. Last September, the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado even proposed using Bitcoin as a national reserve asset. Its current holdings are from the Forbes magazine.

The BTC holdings of the Finnish authorities once reached as high as 1,981, worth nearly 75 million euros, and this fund mainly came from the assets seized by the Finnish customs in drug raids before 2018. After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022, the Finnish authorities sold 1,891 BTC, which was worth $47.35 million at the time, at an average price of only about $23,000.

As for Georgia's BTC holdings, no specific source has been found yet. According to the information on the BitcoinTreasuries website, we only know that these 66 BTC were bought at an average price of $20,185 in September 2022, and the specific information is still a mystery.

Other Countries: "Sell and Profit Forever" Bulgaria and Germany

In addition to the above countries, Bulgaria and Germany are worth mentioning separately.

According to media reports, the former had previously seized more than 200,000 BTC from criminals, and it is understood that the Southeast European Law Enforcement Center (SELEC), composed of 12 member states including Bulgaria, issued a notice that a total of 213,519 bitcoins were seized that month, and 23 Bulgarian nationals were arrested in this operation, which was carried out after an investigation into a customs fraud case. At the time, the BTC price was around $15,524, with a total value of about $3.3 billion. According to a media report in 2022, this fund was eventually secretly sold by the Bulgarian government to Asian investors and sovereign wealth funds at an average price of about $16,900, with a total value of about $3.6 billion, and the funds raised were mainly used to form a new aircraft squadron for the Bulgarian military. Now, the Bulgarian government has effectively "sold and profited" about $1.7 billion, which can be called the "most expensive cost in history".

As for the German government, it is another example of "selling and profiting forever", and compared to the "long history" of the Bulgarian government's sell-off, it is undoubtedly a "fresher case".

In June 2024, the German government sold all 50,000 BTC seized from the pirated movie website Movie 2k, at an average price of around $60,000, which at one point caused BTC prices to plummet by about 15% and triggered a market panic. But after BTC gradually broke through new highs to around $108,000 after Trump's successful election as the next US president, in a sense, the German government has become the "biggest clown in the cryptocurrency industry" in the eyes of cryptocurrency industry insiders - its sell-off funds exceeded $2.5 billion, and the time difference was less than 6 months.

One can't help but sigh that even a national entity may not be able to grasp "windfall gains" well, truly a matter of time and fate.

Summary: It will take some time for the establishment of a national strategic Bitcoin reserve

The latest news shows that Dennis Porter, co-founder of the Satoshi Action Fund, which advocates the establishment of a national strategic Bitcoin reserve, has written that the 14th state in the US is now preparing to introduce legislation on a "strategic Bitcoin reserve". At the same time, Simon Gerovich, CEO of the Japanese listed company Metaplanet, which has seen a surge in its share price by following MicroStrategy's example of purchasing BTC reserves, previously stated that if Trump adopts a Bitcoin strategic reserve, other Asian countries may follow suit.

Additionally, according to betting information from the well-known US prediction platform Kalshi, the probability of Trump pushing for the establishment of a Bitcoin reserve by January 2026 is currently reported at 53%, down significantly from the previous high of 67.6%.

At present, for Trump to fulfill his previous commitment made at the Nashville Bitcoin conference, he still needs to overcome many challenges. However, the continuous inflow of funds into the BTC spot ETF has become a foregone conclusion, and the process of cryptocurrency mainstream adoption has also been gradually accelerating. 2025 will undoubtedly be an important year for further increasing the penetration rate of cryptocurrencies.

Will the US's BTC holdings continue to grow? Can the US's BTC strategic reserve be established soon? What will the specific operational model be?

Only time will tell us the final answer.