For several years now, governments have been taking a keen interest in the holding of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. According to the latest revelations from the Arkham Intelligence website, this accumulation also concerns the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The United Arab Emirates holds $700 million in Bitcoin
Holding Bitcoin has now become a sport practiced by traditional financial institutions, such as publicly traded companies and governments. This accumulation is a constant quest for new BTC, with demand sometimes exceeding the actual amount issued.
In total, companies (private and publicly traded) and governments hold an estimated 1.4 million BTC ($208 billion). If we add the spot Bitcoin ETF market to this, the amount skyrockets to over 3 million units, accounting for an estimated 16% of the available supply.
This calculation does not take into account certain countries that do not really play the game of transparency, even though it is part of the DNA of the Bitcoin blockchain. This is particularly the case in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), known for having a population that is very fond of cryptocurrencies… and very close ties to Donald Trump.
This reality had been overlooked until Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain de-anonymization company, established the first official identification of crypto addresses associated with this territory.
The United Arab Emirates’ $700 million in BTC assets are now tagged on Arkham.
Arkham Intelligence
A fortune mainly derived from BTC mining
According to data available on the brand-new page of the Arkham Intelligence website dedicated to the United Arab Emirates, it appears that this Middle Eastern country holds a portfolio of 6,333 BTC in total.
A digital fortune mainly derived from “Bitcoin mining operations carried out by Citadel, a public company majority-owned by the UAE Royal Group through IHC.” A glance at the details of this account’s transactions is enough to understand the predominance of this activity in the BTC revenue generated.
This situation is very different from countries such as the United States (198,000 BTC) or the United Kingdom (61,245 BTC), whose Bitcoin holdings mainly come from seizures made in the context of legal proceedings. In fact, it is more similar to Bhutan (11,286 BTC), which has a fortune in mined BTC that recently represented the equivalent of 40% of its gross domestic product (GDP).
This significant amount—ranked sixth among Bitcoin-holding countries ahead of El Salvador (6,246 BTC)—is a far cry from speculation about a fortune of 420,000 BTC held by the United Arab Emirates, whose value was supposed to be close to $46 billion. Could there be other addresses yet to be discovered?
