The Manhattan U.S. Attorney Office announced Thursday that they have secured judicial sign off from U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken on the forfeiture sale of the 29,655 bitcoin sized from Silk Road. Current estimate of value as of the time of this writing is in between $23 and $28 million depending on which exchange you value the coins at. The proceeds of the sale will go to the U.S. Treasury coffers.
For the unfamiliar, Silk Road was an online marketplace operating in the Deep Web. It was an anything goes bazaar of sorts where deals for the innocuous to the illegal transpired. Think eBay with no rules as to what could be posted. You might find that album you have been looking for since you were 14 or a kilo of cocaine. It was sized and shut down in October of 2013.
Silk Road was allegidly conceived and operated by Ross Ulbricht who went by the name the Dread Pirate Roberts, a tip of the hat to the movie "The Princess Bride." The 29 year old Ulbricht was arrested on October 1st in San Francisco on charges ranging from violating several narcotics laws to illegal computer hacking.
Thursday's forfeiture announcement does not apply to the 144,366 Bitcoins that were sized from Ulbrict's personal accounts. Valued between $116.5 and $131.8 million at the time of this writing, again depending on which exchange you use to value them. The announcement states "Ulbricht has filed a claim in the civil forfeiture action, asserting that he is the owner of the Bitcoins found on his computer hardware, and contesting the forfeiture of those Bitcoins."
What does this all mean in regards to your holdings?
How the government plans to sell the seized Bitcoins, and what affect the sell off will have on the market value, is a highly debated topic in the cryptocurrency community at the moment. Some believe it will, at least temporary, crash the price of Bitcoin which has remained relatively stable since the dip and recovery caused by governmental policy announcements coming out of China. Others see it as a unique affirming action by the U.S. Government of the legitimacy of Bitcoin and the legality of trading it for FIAT.
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