by • The US government has moved nearly 10K Bitcoin worth over $300M from the Silk Road seizure.
• The government had previously announced plans to liquidate approximately 40,000 remaining BTC from the seizure in “four more batches” over the remainder of the calendar year.
• On July 12th, approximately 9,825 of the Bitcoin (BTC) associated with the Silk Road seizure were sent to three addresses and subsequently split across 101 new wallets.
US Government Moves Nearly 10K Bitcoin
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has recently moved around 9,825.25 Bitcoin worth around $299 million in a series of transactions on July 12th. These coins originate from a cryptocurrency wallet associated with the DOJ and are part of a Silk Road seizure conducted previously by them. It is unclear whether these coins were sent to exchange addresses for sale or remain in DOJ custody at this time.
Previous Plans to Liquidate Remaining BTC
The US government had previously revealed their plans to offload the rest of the BTC from this Silk Road seizure over four batch transactions during 2020’s remainder calendar year. Therefore, these current transactions could be related to testing liquidity strategies for those future batches.
DOJ Transactions
At 1:00pm UTC on July 12th, two transactions were sent containing nearly 10K bitcoin (BTC) which was split into three addressess initially and then later distributed into 101 separate wallets. This bulk of 8200 BTC alone is worth almost $250 million at present day prices.
Profit Made During March 7 Batch
On-chain data suggests that one account associated with batch transactions conducted on March 7 gained a profit in amounting to $237,934,919 on 30174.7 in BTC holdings which are not currently linked to this July 12th transaction batch . However, another account that received 9,825.6 BTC also spread among 101 accounts during that same March 7 batch transaction . This account then joined 599 other accounts and sent 0.1 BTC ($3k approx.) as well as 51 BTC spread across 37 addresses in total afterwards .
Conclusion
It remains uncertain if these recent moves by the US government are meant for further sale or if they will retain custody for now but it appears that they have been testing out various liquidity strategies related to their previous announcement about liquidating remaining Bitcoin seized during Silk Road operations .
