Bitcoins in Bulgaria: Five Little Known Facts on Cryptos in the Eastern European Country

Bulgaria is a small country where cryptocurrencies find a warm welcome, and rumors have it the government may be sitting on one of the biggest stashes of Bitcoin in the world.

1. The Bulgarian Government May Not Actually Have those BTC.

The Bulgarian police claimed to have "seized" Bitcoins as part of a raid on a crime group. Back in 2015, more than 230,000 BTC must have been present, as the police report stated it discovered one wallet file. Currently, there is not one wallet with a similar amount of BTC, and no one is certain if the Bulgarian police knows the ins and outs of Bitcoins, and whether they actually seized anything. So either the small country is now a whale sitting on $3 billion's worth of Bitcoins, or it's the ultimate false hope.

2. Bulgarian Banks are Getting Cold Feet.

For months, Bitcoiners in Bulgaria have complained of banks blacklisting the IBAN of the Coinbase and Kraken accounts. What no one wants to see in your payment notice is a hideous 32-digit number, your transaction number. It seems Bitcoiners are giving banks a headache when it comes to AML compliance, and some have decided they don't want to go anywhere near an exchange, even if it is a large and legitimate one like Kraken. One Bulgarian bank issued a strange official statement, concluding that,

"Virtual currencies were created during the financial crisis of 2008 to mitigate some risks inherent to the global financial system."

Basically, banks conflate Bitcoin with money laundering and preserve the right to refuse transfers at any one moment.

3. Bulgaria had a Bad Experience with OneCoin.

OneCoin, the biggest pyramid scam in the crypto community, had its offices smack-dab in the middle of Sofia, in one of the busiest commercial streets. Dr. Ruzha Gencheva has since then become persona non grata. While OneCoin might have gotten endorsement from the government, but then it became known for the scam that it is.

4. Bulgarian Developers Helped Launch BTG.

The voluntary- or compensated works of at least three developers from Bulgaria has helped launch Bitcoin Gold. For now, they claim they warned against using untested wallets, and tried to mitigate the damage once the hack had happened, claiming they had nothing to do with the theft.

5. 
   Bulgaria has 59 Bitcoin full nodes, three more added in recent days, and up from around 46 a few months ago. This puts the small country on par with Finland, and even crypto-friendly Estonia boasts just 16 full nodes. Bulgaria has a strong developer community fueled by universities and coding bootcamps, plus a strong culture of having a technical hobby- something of a remnant from the 80's Communist era, when electronics was considered a fashionable hobby, and the first generations of engineers flocked to computing. Since then, Bulgarian engineers and developers have sent their share of technical talent to the Bitcoin network.Bulgarian Bitcoiners Like Their Bitcoin Nodes.