On March 14, US authorities sold 9,861 BTC for a total of about $215.7 million, according to court filings submitted at the end of the month.
The liquidated assets represented only a portion of the more than 50,000 BTC confiscated from James Zhong in November 2021. A year later he pleaded guilty to illegally obtaining them on the Silk Road darknet marketplace.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, in September 2012 Zhong ran a fraudulent scheme using fake accounts, listing no goods or services on the platform.
Authorities say he deposited between 200 and 2,000 BTC, after which he carried out rapid withdrawals in multiples of the deposited amount. He initiated more than 140 such transactions, totaling 50,000 BTC.
“There remain about 41,491 BTC that the government will liquidate in four batches over the course of a calendar year. … The second round of liquidations will not take place until Zhong is sentenced,” the documents say.
Tron founder Justin Sun expressed willingness to acquire the confiscated bitcoins at a 10% discount to “minimise potential market impact”.
US government has announced its intention to sell an additional 41,500 #BTC this year. To minimize the potential impact on the market, I would like to offer to purchase these BTC at a 10% discount for an OTC deal.
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) March 31, 2023
As of writing, 41,491 BTC are worth about $1.18 billion.
In March 2023, analysts at Dune named the U.S. government “one of the largest Bitcoin whales”. In their estimate, the total stock of the top cryptocurrency held by U.S. authorities is estimated at 205,515 BTC (~$5.8 billion at the time of writing).