An anonymous reader cites TorrentFreak's report. German police, with help from the FBI, managed to secure nearly 50,000 Bitcoin (US$2 billion) from the operators of the defunct movie streaming portal Movie2k. […] Movie2K is another piracy site that showed early interest in Bitcoin. In its heyday, the site was the dominant pirated streaming portal in German-speaking countries. It generated a healthy revenue stream, some of which was held in Bitcoin. However, the site operator could not spend most of it. This site was surprisingly shut down in the spring of his 2013. Many suspected that the site was plagued by legal problems, which was confirmed years later when Dresden police announced several arrests.
While it was rare to see new activity on documents that were already dated, the biggest surprise came later when police announced they had secured $29.7 million in Bitcoin from the site's operators. The seizure was one of the largest of its kind, but authorities estimate the operator had even more bitcoins stashed away. New information released today by Dresden police shows that that assumption was correct.
Nearly 50,000 bits of Bitcoin were “provisionally” secured earlier this month following an investigation by the Dresden General Prosecutor's Office, the Saxon State Criminal Police and the local tax authority (INES). This catch is worth more than $2 billion at today's exchange rates. Never before has such a large amount of Bitcoin been secured by German authorities. It is also one of the largest crypto assets in the world. “The bitcoins were seized after the defendant voluntarily transferred the bitcoins to an official wallet provided by the government.” [Federal Criminal Police Office]. This means that a final decision regarding the use of Bitcoin has not yet been made,” police wrote.