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Frances Leader's avatar

United States (US)

The U.S. government remains the largest Bitcoin holder, with approximately 198,012 BTC (~$18.3 billion as of April 2025). However, this marks a slight decrease from July 2024, as the government liquidated portions of its holdings. A significant development was President Donald Trump’s executive order in March 2025 to create a “Digital Fort Knox”—a strategic cryptocurrency reserve consolidating Bitcoin from asset forfeitures.

China

Despite its ban on crypto trading and mining, China remains the second-largest governmental Bitcoin holder, now at 194,000 BTC (~$17.6 billion). Most of these assets originate from the 2019 PlusToken Ponzi scheme. While China has not liquidated these holdings, the government remains tight-lipped on future plans.

United Kingdom (UK)

The UK holds 61,000 BTC (~$5.6 billion), all acquired through crime-related seizures. The government has yet to decide whether to sell these holdings or use them for public finance needs, as suggested in recent policy discussions.

https://www.coingecko.com/research/publications/government-bitcoin-holdings

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Grub Street In Exile's avatar

Frances this is brilliant.

Thanks for sharing this profound insight.

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Ivan M. Paton's avatar

Nothing is ever as it seems

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John Day MD's avatar

Thanks Frances. Interesting tidbit. I saw this story in March that North Korea had become the #3 national Bitcoin-holder: https://www.fintechweekly.com/magazine/articles/north-korea-becomes-third-largest-bitcoin-holder-after-bybit-hack

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White Eagle's avatar

I'm sure I must have missed something here...but I fail to see why Iran mining Bitcoin and their govt owning the lion's share of it's profits is any concern of our American govt. The only issue I can see that would matter is, if their Bitcoin operation is stealing the profits of the originator that created Bitcoin.

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Frances Leader's avatar

By mining Bitcoin Iran has a revenue stream which cannot be sanctioned.

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White Eagle's avatar

You can be sure that upsets the powers that be in America... We don't like losing control of anything...especially to a country that Zionist Israel wants to destroy, for their Greater Israel Project...

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Rob D's avatar

I believe Iran is one of the last countries on the planet that don't want any part of the evil central banking systems that most other tyrannical countries (including the US) use. It's amazing to look back on all of the countries that have been destroyed by the US over the last couple of decades... all of them were rejecting these disgusting central bankers...

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Edward Flynn's avatar

Thank you for this stunning article.

There is a square mile inside the City Limits of called “The City of London.” City of London mines “woke” world wide.”

I won’t type what thinking.

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Frances Leader's avatar

Exactly following your drift…. it is obvious isn’t it?

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Hillary Han's avatar

Very interesting. Thank you Frances.

Maybe this is not relevant or even true, but reading this article "The Unspoken Aspects of Iran's Nuclear Program" by Thierry Meyssan , there is more to it, which actually spills over into your substack and the extensive crypto mining, as well of their ethical principles.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article222538.html

And here is a short video about the difference between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W-GEE6YU4M&t=62s

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Frances Leader's avatar

Many thanks for those links Hillary! xx

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Tirion's avatar
8dEdited

I agree that the Zion-Iran 12-Day War was another fake war and that the nuclear issue was a pretext and a distraction/mis-direction. Bitcoin miners may have been a secondary target.

I think Simon Dixon makes a good case that the primary purpose was to eliminate opposition in both Israel and Iran to normalisation. Dixon suggests that Trump, on his recent Arabian Gulf tour, did a deal with the Saudis and the Gulf Arabs to normalise relations with Israel so that Gaza, The West Bank, The Golan and parts of Israel could be turned into a huge real estate re-development project. Think Neom, BB/Trump/Kushner condos and hotels, The Ben Gurion Canal, Gaza Marine oil and gas, etc, etc, etc.

Trump publicly announced to the media in February what his plan was, and now he has Saudi and GCC money lined up at the trough, waiting to dive in:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%27s_Gaza_Strip_proposal

Send Iran another lump of money (USD30bn?) and lift sanctions in return for Iran and its proxies not hindering or interfering in the trough projects.

Am I too cynical?!

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Palamambron's avatar

I get a lot out of your comments. Thanks for sharing.

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Tirion's avatar
6dEdited

Oh, cool. Thank you!

Happy 4th July to you and yours!

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Frances Leader's avatar

It is possible, I suppose, but do you see a religious leadership being bought off that easily?

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AC's avatar

Apparently the Iran government are on record stating that the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia are Jews. They said they previously were at war with the same families decades earlier. We also know of Israeli news reports of former Iranian president that is meant to be Jew, according to stamping and info in his passport. It seems the world is a stage, I am sure there are many nuances but all is never as it seems. The US government along with Israel funds, trains and arms terrorist organisations throughout the middle east. Hamas was founded and funded by Israel and the US. They create these enemies to further their agenda which allows them to do things they otherwise wouldn't be able to justify.

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Tirion's avatar

I think the threat of further bombings/assassinations for those who survived the 12-Day War could be quite persuasive, even for (supposedly?) religious leaders. Some spiritual leaders are more more spiritual than others?!

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Frances Leader's avatar

Don't forget that Trump is angling for the Nobel Peace Prize....

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Tirion's avatar

Yes indeed and I think he believes that normalisation will not only unlock yuge real-estate profits for himself and his friends, but also the Nobel. I'm sure he would prefer not to have to bomb Iran again to stop them interfering in his peace-through-strength plan for The Levant/Greater Israel; but I'm also sure he wouldn't hesitate if he felt his prize and profits were in jeopardy. How ironic!

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Frances Leader's avatar

I heard that a Ukrainian lawyer nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024 and then withdrew the nomination..... but now Pakistan and a U.S. Representative (Buddy Carter) also nominated Trump for his efforts related to the Israel-Iran 12-day fiasco.

As all winners of Nobel Peace Prizes are utter charlatans I am very confident that Trump will win. 😂🙄

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Tirion's avatar
8dEdited

Sad, but probably true. Shame on the Nobel committee - yet another institution that has apparently been subverted and corrupted to the point of being ridiculed :(

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Moonspinner's avatar

OFF TOPIC -- warning of fraudulent credit card charges for subscribers to "First Principles" substack of Dr Reid Sheftall. His identity was stolen many months ago, and he informed us of that before his Substack account was taken over by the criminal. Despite Substack being notified of that (including my complaint to them last month), Substack has not shut down the account. Not only have fraudulent email appeals for "donations" been sent out to subscribers, but also now in the last week subscribers are subject to fraudulent credit card charges. I had to cancel my card this morning when my bank notified me of a suspicious $250 charge to Dr Sheftall's substack. Perhaps Substack refuses to do anything about this because they receive a cut of all charges?

https://drreidsheftall.substack.com/p/i-somehow-lost-part-five-of-the-series/comment/129944222

This is when Dr Sheftall first notified us of the identity theft: https://drreidsheftall.substack.com/p/i-have-been-through-hell

This is his new Twitter/X account. I don't have an account, so perhaps some "good Samaritan" could ask him to again contact Substack to again try to close his account so that no more fraud is perpetrated -- https://xcancel.com/GReid27295/with_replies

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Frances Leader's avatar

Thanks for the heads up, Moonspinner! I sincerely hope that Dr Reid Sheftall can be contacted and informed of this.

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Moonspinner's avatar

I'm livid because last month I gave all the info and evidence necessary for Substack to close the account, but they did NOTHING, and now hundreds of dollars of fraudulent charges are hitting his subscribers. Some poor woman lost over $700. I had cancelled my renewal, but not the subscription, as I wanted to see if Dr Sheftall was able to re-establish control of his substack in future. So you must cancel the subscription, and not just the renewal.

Having to cancel a credit card, as I did this morning, causes hassle due to all the automatic payments I have on it, including dozens of substacks. This shows how vulnerable subscribers are, and many of us subscribe to many substacks. I'm considering having to unsubscribe from all of mine because obviously Substack does NOT have proper credit card security in place. And Substack was informed of this identity theft many months ago by Dr Sheftall himself.

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Frances Leader's avatar

It is very concerning indeed. I wonder how someone was able to steal his identity so successfully. They obviously have changed the passwords and destination bank account numbers so Substack/Stripe should be able to identify where the bogus stolen funds have gone.

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Moonspinner's avatar

And nothing will happen unless Substack does the right thing. They have refused to close down the hijacked substack account, so Substack is making money off of all the fraudulent Stripe charges.

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Moonspinner's avatar

Dr Sheftall said it all started with his iPhone being stolen in Phnom Penh, and then of course most people have bank account apps and all sorts of apps on their cellphone these days. That's one of the reasons why I don't own a cellphone ...

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Frances Leader's avatar

Me neither! But my reason is to avoid being cooked by microwaves!

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Stateless3's avatar

Has anyone ever asked the simple question - what happens when the size of the Bitcoin blockchain becomes so unwieldy that the entire system grinds to a halt? Since 99.99999999999999 percent of the population has no idea how it works, it can be used for multiple agendas, just like the non-existent nuclear weapons and the fake theories of genetics, virology, SR, GR, Quantum Physics, Quantum computing, Artificial Intelligence, the heliocentric model of the solar system, evolution, the age of the Earth, the distance to the 'stars' (which they hilariously claim are driven by processes that do not exist) and even Newton's bogus theory of gravity. All are chimeras that can be rolled out on queue to suit the agenda, but the dummies will never get it. Bitcoin is a stepping stone to the CDBC. It makes absolutely no sense as a payment mechanism or as a store of wealth. It is simply too slow to replace the current monetary payment systems, and one solar EMP will bring it crashing down. Furthermore, no sane person would have used it as every transaction can be tracked and traced. Gold and silver, on the other hand, are real and not artificially reproducible.

Anything related to BTC or cryptocurrencies is a psyop. The clue is in the name.

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Frances Leader's avatar

To answer your initial question - There are side-chains which are known as layer two solutions. They partition the data base so that each node does not need to keep the complete blockchain ledger.

Beyond that you have outlined my misgivings about all crypto currencies too, but that is not the issue I am raising on this occasion. Iran's economy has embraced Bitcoin and so the attack on its energy infrastructure would appear to have been nothing whatever to do with 'nuclear weapons production' capability as we were led to believe.

THAT is the point being made.

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Jean-Sebastien Savard's avatar

Thats a refreshing new take on iran war and it please me we seek outside the box as usuel around here! Thats why your of D best around 👍

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poetinapaperbag's avatar

Fake war .. Fake Peace

Real Romulus .. Real Remus

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Gayle Wells's avatar

Really? Operations hidden for whose benefit and destruction of them for whose benefit? Very interesting. It is laughable that the very piggery funding climate crisis madness are engaged in the absolute exhaustion of energy, complete destruction of nature, the worst sources of pollution, needing nuclear power and massive amounts of water to cool their spyware apparatus of AI and bitcoin digital currency dreams to be realised.

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JD's avatar

Bravo, good sleuthing. We were all focused on damage to infrastructure and did they or did they not have the bomb? Remember one thing that JFK was doing was trying to get out from under the 'Federal' Bank.

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Frances Leader's avatar

There is always an ulterior motive for breaking international law. Wars are never quite as they seem….

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