US government plans to sell bitcoins worth a total of 156 billion yen in 2023

bitcoin sale plan

The U.S. government will divide the crypto assets (virtual currency) Bitcoin (BTC) seized in investigations related to the dark web “Silk Road” into four times in 2023, totaling 41,490.72 BTC (current rate (equivalent to 156 billion yen in total)).

According to court documents dated March 31, published under the name of “Bloomberg Law,” about 9,861 BTC was sold on the 14th of the same month. At this time, the government received a total profit on the sale of about 28.6 billion yen ($21552), excluding fees. This sale and the next four bitcoins to be sold separately were stolen by defendant James Zhong from the Silk Road.

connection: US investigative authorities seize Bitcoin worth 150 billion yen

The Silk Road, opened in 2011, was closed in 2013 by the authorities after being used for illegal drug trafficking. Bitcoin is used to settle transactions, and Bitcoin has been seized from the Silk Road itself. In 2012, Zhong engaged in wire fraud to illegally obtain bitcoin from the Silk Road.

Regarding the sale in March, blockchain security company PeckShield detected on the 8th of the same month that Bitcoin was transferred from a US government law enforcement agency-related wallet. About 9,800 BTC of it was reportedly sent to Coinbase. At the time, the market was wary of this huge remittance.

#PeckShieldAlert 49k $BTC (worth $1 Billion) from wallets related to US Government law enforcement seizures have been transferred to #Coinbase (~9.8k $BTCworth $217M), bc1qf2…fsv (30k $BTC) & bc1qe7…rdg (9k $BTC) #SilkRoad pic.twitter.com/4MzlvDzkut

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) March 8, 2023

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At the time, it was the Department of Justice’s largest seizure.

Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht was arrested in 2013. The Silk Road incident is one of the momentous events in the history of Bitcoin.

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In November 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice first announced the seizure of Bitcoin stolen by defendant Zhong. The actual seizure was in November 2021.

The seizure was the US Department of Justice’s largest cryptocurrency seizure until February 2022, when it announced that it had seized 94,000 BTC (equivalent to 415 billion yen at the time) illegally leaked from Bitfinex.

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