According to Arkham statistics, the US government currently owns a total of 203,000 BTC. The BTC seized involved two cases involving Silk Road. The first case involved 69,370 BTC from drug sales on Silk Road, which were confiscated from a hacker named "Individual X". The other case involved James ZHONG illegally obtaining about 50,000 bitcoins from the dark web Silk Road through technical means in September 2012. In addition, there are 94,643 BTC confiscated in the investigation of the Bitfinex exchange due to hacker attacks.
Today's news revealed that the US Supreme Court approved the US government to sell the seized BTC worth $4.4 billion that was confiscated from a hacker named "Individual X".
In October 2013, Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2015. In November 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice seized 69,370 BTC from a hacker named "Individual X". These BTCs were stolen from the Silk Road attack.
After the Silk Road incident, an investment company called Battle Born Investments purchased the Silk Road bankruptcy application and claimed to own the 69,370 BTC stolen by "Individual X" through bankruptcy proceedings. However, Battle Born failed to convince the district court in 2022 and the appellate court in 2023 to prove that it obtained the BTC through bankruptcy filings after the Silk Road was closed in 2013. Today, the Supreme Court rejected Battle Born's appeal and ended the lawsuit against the ownership of this batch of BTC. This means that the US government can subsequently sell the 69,370 BTC confiscated.
