The State is experiencing a financial gain from the sale of BTC but doesn’t show how many cryptocurrencies it owns. The location of the 94,000 bitcoin seized from the Bitfinex case is unknown.
The United States of America managed to confiscate 70 bitcoins from Silk Road in November 2020 and is now taking advantage of a 145% gain in parallel with the current digital asset price. By taking possession of funds managed by crypto-related crimes, the US government would be gathering an immense amount of money.
The Silk Road seizure was the most prominent bitcoin confiscation the US authorities had ever led. At that time, approximately USD 1,000 million that came from the Dark Web market remained under the Department of Justice’s control, when the price was surrounding USD 15,500. With BTC at $38,600, the 69,000 cryptocurrencies gained a value of $2.6 billion.
This situation means that this seizure would be amassing an unprecedented profit for the American nation, given that digital currencies are still in federal authorities’ hands due to bureaucratic and political factors.
The authorities gained total power over the seized currencies, and since then, the cryptocurrency has achieved a high rate, valued at more than 140%. Even the return seems to be higher as the digital currency approached a record price valued at $67,600 in November last year, considering that the price went through various declines.
The government now holds the bitcoin it confiscates since it would have acknowledged that it was a method to gather an immense amount of money. Previously, US marshals auctioned 187,300 bitcoins through a series of auctions, nine of them, to be exact, since 2014 for an amount that did not surpass $200,000.
According to various media outlets, the government made these auctions without knowing that the seized BTC would give the State benefits and advantages valued at USD 7,000 million.
The funds that come from bitcoin auctions sometimes get placed into the Treasury Forfeiture Fund or the Division of Justice Property Forfeiture Fund and serve as financial support for future investigations on the subject.
The US Government does not Show Enough Transparency
Not many things get handled with total transparency by the US government. This lack of clarity comes directly from the Forfeiture.gov site, which records the Department of Justice’s administrative, civil, and criminal actions involving confiscation.
The site should generally be the point to go for data on the total amount of digital currencies the government has under its jurisdiction. But, it shows some delay between the publication date and the confiscation dates.
Reports are not stored online, and paper copies about these activities do not exist. Also, the bitcoin shows zero availability on linking the wallets to the owners; It makes the situation even shadier and clarifies that the government lacks transparency about its bitcoin holdings.
A curious case is that of Fortune. Fortune found that at least 322 bitcoins got confiscated from a drug dealer based in Texas in 2014, but there is no single record of their sale.
The note also references bitcoin loot from Alexandre Cazes, who authorities say operated the dark web marketplace AlphaBay, which got now owned by the US Department of Justice, which seized it during a global sting procedure.
By: Jenson Nuñez
