Bitcoin price falls below $100,000 after US government is allowed to sell 69,000 confiscated coins

The US government is set to sell more than 69,000 confiscated Bitcoin, an event that could have a major impact on the cryptocurrency’s price.

The decision by a US federal district court was made public by the online magazine Decrypt. According to the report, the money came from the decommissioned, illegal online trading platform Silk Road. The US government could thus collect more than 6 billion US dollars; on Wednesday, as much as 7 billion would have been possible. However, the decision does not yet mean that the sale can begin. Administrative steps are necessary and there is also a time window for appeals to a court, the magazine writes.

Silk Road was a darknet marketplace that operated from around 2011 to 2013. Criminal transactions of all kinds were conducted via the platform. It was used by drug traffickers and other illegal sellers to trade in drugs, credit card data and Trojans, among other things. In 2015, the founder of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, who is said to have been active under the nickname “Dread Pirate Roberts”, was unanimously sentenced to two life sentences by a jury. The US government has already auctioned off a large proportion of the more than 144,000 Bitcoin confiscated from him. Only later were the 69,370 Bitcoin now at issue confiscated from an anonymous person.

Confiscated Bitcoin is sold time and again, and the Federal Republic of Germany also has experience of this. But because of the massive rise in the price of the cryptocurrency and because it is the largest such tranche, the US government could realize a record sum that exceeds all previous revenues many times over. According to Yahoo News, market observers believe it is possible that the sale will have an impact on the price of Bitcoin, but so far, such sales have been split into several steps. On the other hand, the next US President, Donald Trump promised during the election campaign that he would stop the practice of selling. It is therefore still unclear whether the almost 70,000 Bitcoin will actually come onto the market.