The US government has moved its Silk Road Bitcoin (BTC) reserve, raising speculation about whether he plans to sell the assets.
On Wednesday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) transferred $300 million worth of BTC to new addresses in a series of transactions, according to Bitcoin data block explorer.
The recent transfer likely originated from the Justice Department’s seizure of $3.36 billion worth of BTC in 2021, the agency’s largest seizure to date.
In November 2021, law enforcement officials arrested hacker James Zhong, who confessed to stealing digital assets from the Silk Road illicit market.
Authorities seized 50,676 BTC worth about $3.36 billion at the time. The government has been gradually selling off parts of the stash ever since.
In March, they successfully sold $215 million worth of BTC, announcing their intention to lay out an additional $1.1 billion.
However, some have speculated that the US government may be testing liquidity strategies.
An account associated with batch transactions made on March 7, 2023 appears to have Be benefit in the amount of $237,934,919 in 30,174.7 in BTC holdings not currently associated with the July 12 batch of transactions.
However, another account that received 9,825.6 BTC from the DOJ during the March 7 batch distributed those coins among 101 accounts.
The same account later joined 599 other accounts to send a total of about 0.1 BTC to another account, which then distributed its holdings of about 51 BTC across 37 addresses.
Silk Road was an online black market where users could buy and sell illicit goods anonymously.
It operated through the dark web: anonymous networks that can only be accessed through specialized software like Tor Browser.
The United States has an impressive track record of seizing stolen crypto funds
In addition to the Silk Road stolen Bitcoin, the US has also managed to track down stolen funds linked to a few other major crypto heists.
Last year, the US government recovered and seized some $3.6 billion worth of Bitcoin linked to the 2016 hack of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.
Combined with the Silk Road-related seizure, the US government’s Bitcoin stash accounts for more than 1% of Botal’s 21 million bitcoin supply.
Historically, Bitcoin seized by the US Department of Justice has been auctioned off to investors, without the auctions themselves creating much of a market impact.
However, it is worth noting that the government has not held a major Bitcoin auction for some time, and therefore it is unclear exactly when the next one will be.
