BlockBeats reported that on October 8, Cointelegraph reported that the US Supreme Court refused to hear a case regarding the ownership of 69,370 bitcoins (worth approximately US$4.38 billion) that were confiscated by the US government from the dark web market Silk Road.
The appeal was filed by Battle Born Investments, which claimed to have purchased an interest in the seized bitcoins through bankruptcy assets. The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case could allow the U.S. government to sell the bitcoins now.
Prior to this, Battle Born failed to convince the district court (2022) and the Court of Appeal (2023) that it obtained the bitcoins through a bankruptcy claim after Silk Road closed in 2013. The company claimed that the debtor in the bankruptcy case, Raymond Ngan, was the mysterious "Individual X" who stole billions of dollars in bitcoins from Silk Road.
Both courts were unconvinced, and last year a San Francisco Court of Appeal judge dismissed the case, saying the company had no legal claim to the bitcoins.
