US Government Makes Over 215Mn USD After Silk Road BTC Sale

The US Government sold over 9,000 BTC worth more than 215 million USD.
Holding one of the biggest BTC reserves made the government a leading crypto whale.
Bitcoin has been up by more than 60% since January 2023.

The United States government reportedly sold Bitcoin from its reserve, a major part of which consists of seized cryptocurrency. Forbes reported that– the memo filing on March 14 in the Southern District of New York revealed that the US government sold seized BTC linked to the Silk Road marketplace hack.

According to the filing, the government had around 50,000 bitcoin in its reserve related to the marketplace hack seizure. It sold around 9,861.17 BTC, making the government approximately 215.5 million USD worth of funds.

At the time of capture, BTC was said to be recently sold when its price was 21,877 USD. However, the volume of bitcoin sold was significant, but not enough to affect its trading price at the time of sale. Currently, the flagship cryptocurrency is trading at more than 28,000 USD.

The sold bitcoin was linked with the wire fraud accused James Zhong. He was indicted for illegally getting his hands on more than 50,000 BTC from the Silk Road internet marketplace in September 2012. In November last, Zhong reportedly pled guilty and may get sentenced in the near future.

TheCoinRepublic earlier reported that the US government even surpassed institutional holders of Bitcoin. This included giants like Tesla and Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy. In addition, the government even beat Galaxy Digital and Voyager-like institutions and became the biggest Bitcoin (BTC) whale.

At the time of reporting, the US government was holding 205,515 bitcoin, according to the Dune Analytics data. In terms of USD, the value of the overall bitcoin stash was said to be about 5.5 billion USD.

MicroStrategy follows the list of biggest BTC holders with 138,995 BTC worth 3.75 billion USD. Galaxy Digital Holdings had 40,000 BTC, while Voyager Digital had around 12,260 BTC. Centibillionaire Elon Musk’s electric vehicle giant Tesla had around 10,725 BTC, whose value in USD was approx 289 million USD.

The flagship cryptocurrency witnessed one of the toughest phases since its inception during last year’s crypto winter. Though it dropped to its recent lows, Bitcoin started moving upwards since the start of this year. With the year starting, Bitcoin was trading at around 16,500 USD which recently hit more than 28,000 USD. It is trading at 27,714 USD which is more than 67% high since its price on January 1.

Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while his post-graduation. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing along with being a developer. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing