This was part of the funds confiscated in 2013 from the Silk Road dark web market place when it was shut down and its founder Ross Ulbricht arrested and given two lifetime prison sentences.
Deaton stated that this does not coincide with the recent SEC policy of proclaiming Coinbase illegal.
In response, Coinbase filed a lawsuit against the regulator. However, what has happened now is that the U.S. government has sent 3,940 BTC worth roughly $241.22 million to this exact exchange to be sold. This money was initially confiscated from a drug trafficker on the Silk Road, and then was forfeited at trial in January 2024.
John Deaton called this move “nonsense coming from our government” since it allows Gary Gensler and Senator Warren to stand against the whole cryptocurrency space but continues to use the services of the largest U.S.-based crypto exchange, Coinbase Prime. Prior to that, a similar sale occurred in March last year when the U.S. government’s wallet sold 9,861 coins for $216 million.
The founder of on-chain data aggregator CryptoQuant believes that this sale will hardly impact the price of Bitcoin on the market. However, this sale coincided with a 1.76% Bitcoin price fall as the world’s flagship cryptocurrency plunged from $61,778 to the $60,688 level. By now, BTC has somewhat recovered and is trading at $61,260 at the time of this writing.
This article was originally published on U.Today
Source: Cryptocurrency - investing.com
