by Andres Ochoa

October 9, 2024

Reading time: 3 minutes

The United States has become a big whale in the Bitcoin market. Composition by CriptoNoticias. auris/ stock.adobe.com; garrykillian/ stock.adobe.com; Pasko Maksim/ stock.adobe.com

  • The bitcoins, estimated at $4.4 billion, are claimed by the firm Battle Born Investments.

  • The firm had appealed to the US Supreme Court to recover the BTC.

As it begins its annual session, the Supreme Court, the highest court in the United States, declined to review an appeal related to a batch of bitcoins associated with the defunct Silk Road platform.

This is an appeal filed by the firm Battle Born Investments in 2023, through which it claims ownership of 69,370 BTC that were seized from an unidentified individual, in the case of Ross Ulbricht's darknet market. As the company explains in its application, in 2013 they acquired the bitcoins amid bankruptcy claims, following the collapse of Silk Road.

Battle Born claims to own the bitcoins confiscated from “Individual X,” who in turn stole them from the underground site. Their claim has been denied several times, prompting them to petition the Supreme Court for certiorari, the process by which judicial review of a lower court or government agency decision is sought. They claim to be “an innocent owner by virtue of their status as a purchaser of the estate during bankruptcy.”

However, a Supreme Court ruling dated October 7 refuses to apply the procedure, opening the door for an order to forfeit the claimed bitcoins issued by the U.S. District Court to be effectively enforced.

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The Supreme Court's denial was preceded by a document from the U.S. Attorney General's Office, which last July recommended that the high court not apply for certiorari, considering that "there is no evidence certifying the ownership of Battle Born."

In this way, it is expected that the US government will now be able to “dispose of the confiscated property in accordance with the law.” This means that US marshals or another agency can be instructed by the court to liquidate the nearly 70,000 bitcoins. The figure, currently equivalent to about USD 4.4 billion, could then enter the market for auction.

The U.S. Marshals Service is expected to handle the liquidation after completing several formalities. If the sale goes through, it would be one of the largest liquidations of seized bitcoins in history.

As CriptoNoticias has reported, the United States government has been moving a significant portion of the confiscated Silk Road bitcoins in recent months, probably in preparation for the sale. Last August, 10,000 BTC were moved to the Coinbase custody service, while in July and April, movements were recorded with 60,000 of the Silk Road BTC seized by the US.

This comes at a time when the handling of seized bitcoin has become a point of debate in the US elections next November. In July, former president and candidate Donald Trump promised to create a “strategic Bitcoin reserve” from bitcoin seized by the government.

#btc #EstadosUnidos #DonaldTrump #Bitcoin

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