There are rumors of some russian politician saying that Putin is considering buying Bitcoin reserves. I believe this has been happening for years now. While they FUD the are buying OTC bigly. Approving Futures was a way to manipulate the price downwards and keep the price down. Once they've shrunk the OTC market, they will pump it to ATH, and keep repeating the cycle as they accumulate. They understand they cannot kill Bitcoin, only become bigger players
It was not a politician
It was some random Russian economist saying something to that tune and then many Western media outlets were quick to pick up the "news". I don't know about Putin considering buying a few bitcoins now and then, but if this "plan" was actually enacted even for 1/100th of the amount rumored, prices would have already skyrocketed. In fact, I'm quite surprised that many distinguished and high-merited posters here seem to actually believe in this rumor. By that I don't mean idle talks and empty theorizing, of course, but rather taking this nonsense seriously
I didn't say I believed anything, I said there were some rumors. In any case they would buy OTC so it wouldn't have a direct impact on the market anyway. Of course they wouldn't go balls deep OTC, just small accumulation over time, otherwise they would dry the OTC market. Intelligence agencies aren't stupid, Bitcoin is on their radar
Uh, so what's the meaning then?
You basically say that there is some dude saying about Putin considering buying Bitcoin reserves and you believe that has been happening for years now. Now you say that you don't believe anything, okay then. So how am I to interpret your words really? You still believe or has already disbelieved that? And what did you believe precisely? It looks like you mean that Putin has been considering buying bitcoins, which is a strange thing to believe in (that was my point)
Anyway, how much can you buy OTC? Obviously, not much and that makes the whole business pretty much pointless. Apart from that, there would be a lot of noise if a lot of coins started moving around, which doesn't seem the case either
By "I believe this has been happening for years now" I meant institutions as a whole, not exactly the Putin case which is just the rumor I cited. I believe institutions and triple letter agencies own stacks of Bitcoin even if to experiment with it and know how utxo's work and whatnot. They need to own and move around Bitcoin and understand the wallets if they want to do chain analysis. Then there's the whole reserve asset part which I believe they are intelligent enough to know that it's worth holding some.
I don't know how liquid the OTC market is. There's art that sells for billions, so they could exchange some of that for BTC, there's many ways to go about it OTC and nothing is registered, the guys at the top of the pyramid don't play by the rules.