Crypto News :
The United States government has reportedly sold over 9,800 BTC linked to the Silk Road darknet market for roughly $215 million earlier this month, as per a court filing released on Friday.
The assets were seized from James Zhong, who admitted to hacking the Silk Road platform in 2012 and stealing over 50,000 BTC, which the US government confiscated in November 2022.
The court filing also revealed that the government has obtained final forfeiture orders for around 51,680.32 BTC, which were valued at over $3.4 billion at the time of seizure, from the Zhong investigation.
US officials plan to sell the remaining 41,500 BTC, worth $1.2 billion, in four batches this year. However, the sale method has not been disclosed.
This is not the first time that the US government has auctioned off seized cryptocurrencies. In 2014, the government sold around 30,000 BTC, also linked to Silk Road, to venture capitalist Tim Draper for $17 million.
Today, those BTC would be worth more than $850 million. According to a dashboard monitoring US government bitcoin auctions, more than $5 billion was left on the table by selling BTC too early.
As of Friday afternoon, bitcoin was trading approximately 1% higher in New York at around $28,450 following the release of the court filing.
