US Authorities Increase Bitcoin Holdings by $3 Billion
Date: 2024-01-05 Author: Dima Zakharov Categories: IN WORLD
The US government's Bitcoin holdings have surged by $3.3 billion in the last three months, reaching a total of $8.3 billion, as reported by Blockworks. Over the past ten years, the US authorities have been involved in three operations, confiscating a total of 207,189 Bitcoins. These seizures are linked to the Silk Road darknet marketplace, hacker Jimmy Chong, and the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.
So far, officials have only sold around 5% of the confiscated Bitcoins, earning $215 million. In March, they announced their intention to sell the remaining Silk Road Bitcoins – 41,491 BTC, valued at $1 billion at the time and $1.8 billion at the current rate – by the end of 2023.
Currently, only one batch of BTC has been processed. In July, it was revealed that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) had sent over 8,000 BTC ($350 million) to Coinbase. However, it remains unconfirmed if any transactions have taken place.
Considering all the government's operations as sales, they have generated $640 million in the last decade through Bitcoin confiscations and transactions with the leading cryptocurrency.
During this time, the price of BTC has increased nearly 70-fold. According to estimates, if the US authorities had chosen to hold onto all the confiscated Bitcoins, they would now possess 400,000 BTC, valued at $17.4 billion.
It was recently announced that an appellate court has made a final decision on the seizure of Silk Road's Bitcoins, and the government plans to confiscate an additional 69,370 BTC. Besides the primary cryptocurrency, federal authorities also aim to seize Bitcoin Gold (BTG), Bitcoin SV (BSV), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
