The capture of Nicolás Maduro has started a huge mystery: does Venezuela own a hidden fortune that would make it a top Bitcoin (BTC-USD) player? Reporter Bradley Hope thinks the government has been swapping the country’s gold for crypto for years. If his math is right, the country might own 600,000 BTC, which is worth about $60 billion.
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While many people are talking about this, the idea is based on estimates rather than clear facts. Here is how the hunt for this hidden money is working.
Bradley Hope Details the Gold to Crypto Pipeline
The $60 billion figure comes from looking at how much gold Venezuela sold, not from a verified digital wallet. Hope says the government sold off physical gold and used a Swiss lawyer to hide the money in Bitcoin. The logic is that since Venezuela was blocked from regular banks, they used gold to build a secret financial backup plan.
Blockchain experts are not convinced because hiding that much Bitcoin from modern tracking tools is very hard. Experts say that if Venezuela really had 600,000 BTC, they would have had to trick every major analyst in the world. Without a specific wallet address, the market sees this as a guess rather than a proven fact.
Maduro Regime Experiments with Hiding Money
Venezuela has used digital assets to survive for a long time. They started their own digital coin, the Petro, years ago and told state companies to use digital wallets for trade. Recently, the state oil company even started asking for payments in stablecoins to keep their money from being frozen by other countries.
This history makes the Bitcoin theory feel more real. Analysts explain that the government has used offshore brokers and special mixers to hide where their money goes. This makes it very hard for investigators to find the exact size of the country’s savings, even though Venezuela is one of the top places in the world for crypto use.
U.S. Authorities Target the Private Keys
Now that Maduro and his team have been caught, the keys to this fortune might be found. If U.S. officials get these codes, the money could be taken over in a legal battle. Some experts think if the U.S. seized this much Bitcoin, it would actually be good for the market because the coins would be locked away for a long time.
The logic is that a U.S. seizure would freeze the coins instead of selling them all at once. By finding the people and wallets involved, officials could finally show exactly how much money Venezuela is hiding. For now, the world is waiting to see if this leads to the biggest crypto recovery ever.
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