# Uncle Sam has over $8B in BTC.

**Published by:** [Durwin](https://paragraph.com/@durwin/)
**Published on:** 2024-01-04
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@durwin/uncle-sam-has-over-8b-in-btc

## Content

The US Gov has made $640M from selling seized BTC over the years, and they have billions more.Yea that’s right. The US government, traditionally not the biggest fan of cryptocurrencies, has over $8 billion in Bitcoin. While the government has been busy seizing and selling Bitcoin linked to illegal activities, the value of their remaining stash has skyrocketed. Genius move. The bad guys do bad things with BTC. Uncles Sam swoops in to catch them, takes the BTC. Meanwhile, the value of the cryptocurrencies is going up and down the whole time. It all started with notable seizures like those from the Silk Road and hackers of the Bitfinex exchange. Flashback to November 2020, and the US authorities had nabbed a whopping 207,189 bitcoins.As time goes on, the value of the crypto assets confiscated will slowly rise too.Fast forward to today, and less than 5% of that has been sold. The most recent sale? A batch of 9,861 BTC at an average price of $21,800 per Bitcoin — a sum that now seems like a bargain basement deal. The current price of BTC is nearly double that. Let’s do some quick math. Had Uncle Sam held onto all those seized Bitcoins, they’d be sitting pretty with around 400,000 BTC, worth a staggering $17.4 billion. Think of what good they could do with that kind of money. Instead, they’ve sold bits and pieces, pocketing around $640 million over the past decade.The US gov has potentially $8B in BTC. Not counting other cryptocurrencies and crypto assets seized.It’s like finding a rare Picasso at a yard sale and flipping it for the price of a regular painting. The US government’s approach to handling Bitcoin has been akin to a cautious investor in an unpredictable stock market. They’ve sold early, missing out on potential gains, perhaps due to the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies. But let’s not forget, this isn’t Wall Street; it’s law enforcement recovering assets from illegal activities. Their primary concern isn’t to maximize profits but to serve justice. They can’t be seen maximizing every dollar and they aren’t that savvy with it anyway. Perhaps giving it to a firm that specializes in that would have been a better move.Now, as we step into 2024, there’s chatter about more Silk Road Bitcoin being offloaded. Yet, no firm timeline on when they might sell the Bitcoin seized from Bitfinex hackers. It’s a guessing game with billions at stake. I am just wondering why they don’t return the coins to the exchange so that they can pay back the users. Still $640M is a lot of profits to sit on. So while they were going around catching bad guys and giving crypto a hard time, they quietly made hundreds of millions and potentially billions from it. Sneaky.How should governments properly deal with seized cryptocurrencies?On one hand, there’s a pragmatic approach to dealing with assets tied to crime. On the other, there’s the tantalizing possibility of what might have been if they’d just held on a little longer. There must be something smarter the US gov can do. So criminals, don’t do it. You do bad things, you may get away with it for a while, but eventually you will get caught. And the US gov benefits from all of it anyway. - Should governments hold on to seized crypto assets? - #BitcoinSeizure #USGovernment #CryptocurrencyIrony #SilkRoadBitcoin #BitfinexHack #DigitalTreasure #BitcoinBonanza #CryptoAssets #SeizedBitcoin #GovernmentHoldings #BitcoinValue #CryptoMarket #FinancialIrony #DigitalCurrency #AssetRecovery

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