The Bitcoin price is under heavy pressure due to fears of “sticky” inflation and yesterday’s ultra-hawkish comments from U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) chairman Jerome Powell. At press time, BTC was trading just above $22,000 and continued to show no strength yet.
At this time comes news that the US government is in the process of selling off some of its seized Bitcoin. Blockchain security firm PeckShield first reported that addresses associated with the US government transferred 49,000 BTC worth $1.08 billion today, which were seized from the Silk Road hacker.
Of that total, 9,826 BTC worth $217 million were transferred to Coinbase and 39,175 BTC worth $867 million were transferred to two new addresses. On-chain data provider Glassnode confirmed this, adding that most (so far) appear to be internal transfers, but approximately 9,861 BTC were sent to a Coinbase cluster.
Glassnode also shared the chart, displaying the estimated Bitcoin balance of the US government.
PeckShield also stated that about 51,351.9 BTC of Silk Road Crime Proceeds were seized by the US government in November 2021 and March 2022 and clustered into 2 addresses.
The seized Bitcoin from founder Ross Ulbricht’s legendary darknet platform “Silk Road” make up a large portion of the US government’s holdings. While Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2015, he was ordered to pay $183 million in restitution related to Silk Road’s total sales.
Before the marketplace was shut down, Silk Road experienced a hack in which 69,370 BTC were stolen. The government seized these Bitcoins in November 2020, and Ulbricht relinquished all rights to the Bitcoin and used them to pay the restitution.
Read more: newsbtc.com
Source: CRYPTO WORLD NETWORK NEWS
