The FBI’s Silk Road Bitcoin is now worth $6.4 billion 
Cryptocurrency Nov 26, 2024 Share
The leading cryptocurrency in the world, Bitcoin (BTC) has made impressive strides when it comes to adoption. Whereas in 2024, BTC is available via exchange-traded funds (ETFs), serves as a store of value and hedge against inflation, and enjoys widespread mainstream popularity, in the last decade, it was quite obscure.
Though unsavory, Bitcoin’s utility as a means of transfer for nefarious purposes is well-documented. This fact has been used (with little success) as an argument against the pioneering digital asset — but BTC has, in fact, been used for everything from the international drug trade to contract killings.
A major blow against such unethical and illegal uses was made on November 3, 2020, when the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) unit seized 69,370 Bitcoins associated with the dark web marketplace Silk Road. As an interesting aside, one of the IRS agents presiding over the case was Tigran Gambaryan — who later moved on to become a Binance executive.
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Up to this point, this significant hoard has been kept in storage — although the Supreme Court has recently allowed the Treasury Department, which has taken custody of the assets, to sell them off.
Such a surge of liquidity on the sell side would doubtlessly serve to bring prices down — although no exact schedule for the sale has been set. In a slightly ironic twist, the tendency of governments to move slowly and inefficiently could stand to significantly benefit the United States — as the value of the seized Bitcoins has risen substantially since the confiscation.
At the moment of seizure, one BTC was worth just $14,000
On November 3, 2020, one Bitcoin was trading at roughly $14,000 — bringing the value of the seized assets to approximately $971,180,000. A company called Battle Born Investments appealed the decision to sell the Silk Road Bitcoin — after a series of appeals, they lost that legal battle on October 7, 2024.
What they did manage to do, however, is to delay the sale for a tad longer than 4 years— at press time, BTC prices have surged to $94,640. This equates to a 576% increase within that timeframe.
BTC price year-to-date (YTD) chart. Source: Finbold
To put matters into slightly more comprehensible terms, the value of those 69,370 Bitcoins has increased to $6,565,176,800 — the difference is a staggering $5,593,996,800 compared to November 3, 2020.
Top 10 BTC wallets by size, with the seized Silk Road assets at 10th place. Source: Bitinfocharts
It remains to be seen whether or not the Silk Road Bitcoin hoard, which represents 0.3506% of the total BTC supply will ever hit the market — President-elect Donald Trump has previously vowed to stop the sale of seized cryptocurrencies, and plans instead to earmark them as reserve assets.
Featured image via Shutterstock