US Government Becomes Biggest BTC Holder After Silk Road Seizure

The US Government becomes the biggest Bitcoin holder after the latest asset seizure in criminal cases with Silk Road as we are reading more in our latest BTC news.

The latest seizure in the criminal case just made the US Government become the biggest bitcoin holders by seizing 69,370 BTC and its equivalent in hard forked tokens that were previously held in the dormant wallet. The wallet address and the held asset were traceable to the infamous Silk Road marketplace. The United States Department of Justice seized crypto assets from an anonymous person called Individual X including 69,370 BTC. The assets are worth over a billion dollars now belonging to this address: 1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbh.

This was the network’s fourth-biggest BTC address and up until a few days ago which was dormant for about five years. Blockchain analytics companies had found that the address was tied to Silk Road which is now a defunct dark web marketplace. Under the States Code Section 981, the government can seize assets that are traceable to offenses considered as a specified unlawful activity. The Silk Road operated between 2011 and 2013 was used to exchange illegal goods like drugs and unlicensed weapons and the only form of payment on the market was Bitcoin.

The investigation from the criminal investigation division of the Internal Revenue Service and the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, which found that the hacker stole Bitcoin from Silk Road and transferred the funds into the aforementioned address in 2013. While the wallet address contained the only bitcoin originally, it received additional coins due to the hard forks. According to the court document, the DOJ seized assets that continued 69,370 BTC and equivalent amounts of Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SV, and bitcoin Cash.

The total sum as of the time of writing seized is now $1.0958372 billion. With the seizure, the US government becomes one of the biggest holders, and similarly to previous incidents, the BTC in the custody of the authorities will be sold at a federal auction. As reported previously, According to Ross Ulbricht who is the founder of the infamous Silk Road darkweb marketplace, BTC is likely to plunge to $1,000 – and there is a strong signal for this.