In 2011, the "Silk Road" darknet market was established and became the first platform to use $BTC as the transaction currency to conduct various illegal transactions, such as drugs, weapons, and fake identity documents. In 2013, the platform was seized and shut down by US law enforcement agencies.

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice seized 69,370 Bitcoins (with a market value of approximately US$4.33 billion at the time) from the address of the hacker “Individual X”. These assets came from the “Silk Road”. After years of legal proceedings, a U.S. court finally ruled to confiscate the Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.

According to reports, after the collapse of “Silk Road”, a company called Battle Born Investments purchased its bankrupt assets and claimed to have the legal rights to the Bitcoins stolen by “Individual X”. However, with the Supreme Court declining to hear the case, the U.S. District Court's confiscation order may ultimately go into effect.

Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who amassed $1.2 billion, was arrested in 2013 and sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole in 2015. In 2021, Ulbricht agreed to relinquish ownership of seized Bitcoins to pay off $183 million in debt.

The U.S. government currently holds more than 200,000 Bitcoins through multiple enforcement actions, which are stored in encrypted cold wallets managed by the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service and may be auctioned or disposed of in the future.