US Government Moves BTC Valued At $300M, Prompting Liquidation Fears
By Brenda Ngari – July 12, 2023
The United States government has once again moved Bitcoin tied to Silk Road, the now-shuttered darknet marketplace.
Two wallets belonging to the U.S. Justice Department moved over $300 million worth of Bitcoin to two new addresses on Wednesday morning. The transfer was conducted in three different transactions, as shown by on-chain data from Blockchain.com.
$300 Million In BTC
Some of Silk Road’s bitcoins are on the move once again.
Fed-controlled wallets sent a total of 9,825 Bitcoin, equating to approximately $301 million. Wednesday’s transaction follows an even bigger transaction in March when roughly $1 billion worth of BTC was transferred, a move that prompted a drop across all top cryptocurrencies.
The U.S. authorities have control of BTC that’s been confiscated from bad actors and occasionally move it around. Previously, they’ve done so because they plan to sell it — but not all the time.
The latest transfer has stoked investor fears that intense sell pressures could drive down the price of Bitcoin. BTC dipped after the transaction was sent. The premier cryptocurrency was, at the time of publication trading hands for $30,327.04 per coin, a 0.8% 24-hour drop.
The Silk Road Bitcoin
Feds seized more than 50,000 bitcoins in November 2022 from hacker James Zhong, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud over the hack of these digital assets from the Ross Ulbricht-run Silk Road back in 2012.
Ross Ulbricht is the proprietor of the Silk Road online black market, which was used to mostly buy and sell illicit goods such as weapons, drugs, and stolen credit card information and primarily used bitcoin as a payment method before authorities closed it in 2014. Ulbricht was sentenced to life in federal prison back in 2015 in a high-profile case. He’s currently serving a double life sentence plus 40 years without the possibility of parole.
Court filings contained details of related BTC wallets, allowing online sleuths to track these wallet addresses. Feds have been selling the seized BTC bit by bit. After selling the crypto in March, the U.S. authorities said they intended to dump the remaining bitcoin in four more batches throughout 2023.
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The original article written by Brenda Ngari and posted on ZyCrypto.com.
Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe
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