U.S. Govt Intends To Sell 41.5k BTC Associated With Silk Road

• The U.S. government plans to offload 41,500 BTC in four batches this year.
• 49,000 BTC of the U.S. govt’s stash was moved to other wallets last month.
• The government is still keeping 164,000 of the BTC seized from the Silk Road in wallets.

The United States government plans to offload thousands of Bitcoins throughout this year. The bitcoins are associated with the case of James Zhong and the darknet’s popular marketplace, the Silk Road. On-chain data shows significant activity in the wallets that hold the BTC seized by the government.

The on-chain activity was highlighted on Twitter by Ki Young Ju earlier today. Ju is the co-founder and CEO of blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant. Data gathered by CryptoQuant shows that the U.S. government moved 49,000 BTC to other wallets last month. Incidentally, the government sold more than 9800 BTC on March 14 for roughly $216 million.

A filing made by the government in the U.S. District Court for the South District of New York revealed that the U.S. government plans to liquidate 41,490 BTC in four batches over the course of the year. This would effectively offload all of the 50,000 BTC that were seized from Zhong in November last year.

“The Government understands from IRS Criminal Investigation – Asset Recovery & Investigative Services that the second round of liquidation will not be sold prior to Zhong’s sentencing date,” the court filing read.

According to Ki Young Ju, the U.S. government is still holding 164,000 BTC in wallets, bringing its total to more than the 138,000 BTC held by Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy. Meanwhile, Tron founder Justin Sun has offered to purchase the U.S. government’s 41.5k BTC at a 10% discount for an OTC deal in an effort to minimize the potential impact on the market.

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