- The U.S. government sold more than 9k Bitcoins seized from the fraud in June last year.
- Bitcoin remained stable in the last 24 hours at around $66k.
The U.S. government grabbed the attention of the cryptocurrency market with its on-chain moves on the 2nd of April.
Seized Bitcoins move
A wallet, under the control of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), was seen transferring 30.17k Bitcoins, worth nearly $2 billion as of this writing, to an unknown wallet, according to Spot on Chain.
From this intermediary address, about 2,000 BTCs, worth $132 million, were sent to a Coinbase Prime address, and around 29.8k BTC, valued at $1.95 billion, to another address that also reportedly belongs to the U.S. government.
Interestingly, the wallet from which these funds were sent contained Bitcoins confiscated as part of the crackdown on the infamous Silk Road Hack of November 2o21.
For the curious, Silk Road was an online black market that exploited Bitcoin’s anonymity to settle transactions and hide user identities.
While the operator was arrested in 2013, the darknet got widespread attention in 2021 when James Zhong, the person who stole more than 50k Bitcoins from the market, was arrested by the U.S. agencies.
It remains to this day one of the biggest cryptocurrency seizures in history.
Notably, the U.S. government sold more than 9k Bitcoins seized from the fraud in June last year. The sale amounted to roughly $206 million at that time.
According to CryptoQuant, the U.S. government still held nearly 209k seized Bitcoins, worth $14 billion.
What could be the reason?
Speculations and discussions were running high in regard to the latest movement. Inasmuch, a prominent crypto influencer reckoned DOJ was moving Bitcoins for custody at Coinbase.
Read Bitcoin’s [BTC] Price Prediction 2024-25
However, an element of anxiety prevailed, as many participants feared that a dump was incoming.
That being said, the fears didn’t translate to increased selling pressure in the market, as Bitcoin remained stable in the last 24 hours, per AMBCrypto’s analysis of CoinMarketCap data.
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