03 березня 2026 Нагляд за ринками 3 хв читання

Від розчищення після Silk Road до стратегічного резерву: як уряди продають конфіскований біткоїн - і шкодують про продаж

When the FBI raided Silk Road in October 2013, it inherited roughly 174,000 bitcoins that belonged to Ross Ulbricht and his marketplace. At the time they were worth about $22 million. A decade later, that haul would have been worth billions.

The first auctions

The US Marshals Service held its first bitcoin auction in June 2014, splitting 29,657 coins into ten blocks. Forty-five registered bidders submitted offers over a twelve-hour window. Venture capitalist Tim Draper quietly claimed every single block, paying around $19 million in what he called an experiment in emerging-market liquidity (Reuters). A second sale followed that December, this time offering 50,000 coins and drawing 27 bids from investors hunting a bulk discount. Barry Silbert's SecondMarket syndicate nearly swept the lot, winning most but not all of the blocks. By then the pattern was clear: Wall Street wanted in (Reuters).

How the process actually works

Seized crypto follows a well-worn path through the American forfeiture system. After prosecutors win a final forfeiture order, custody transfers to the Marshals Service, which has liquidated everything from yachts to jewelry since long before bitcoin existed. The mechanics evolved over time:

Bidders register in advance and submit sealed bids per block
Sales are staggered deliberately so the market is not flooded
Proceeds flow into the DOJ Assets Forfeiture Fund
Victims restitution comes first, law enforcement budgets after

By the mid-2020s the agency had stopped running its own auctions entirely, outsourcing custody and disposal of seized digital assets to private contractors under an indefinite-delivery contract covering a portfolio valued near $77 million (GAO).

The bargains and the regrets

Between 2014 and 2023, the Marshals Service liquidated roughly 195,000 bitcoins for about $366 million. Measured against later market prices, analysts put the missed upside above $20 billion. Senator Cynthia Lummis called the figure deeply troubling.

The most expensive yard sale in crypto history may be the one Uncle Sam ran himself.

Draper's coins were worth several hundred dollars each when he bought them; they would later trade six figures higher. The government was not unlucky so much as institutional by design. Its mandate was liquidation, not speculation, and officials repeatedly said they never wanted to become a hedge fund.

What happens to seized crypto now

Everything changed in March 2025. Executive Order 14233 established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve capitalized with forfeited bitcoin and directed that those coins shall not be sold, ending the auction era overnight (Federal Register). A separate Digital Asset Stockpile holds other forfeited tokens, which Treasury may still liquidate at its discretion. The order also required a full audit of federal holdings within thirty days, an acknowledgment that nobody was quite sure who held what. For darknet observers, the shift matters practically as well as politically. Wallets tied to old seizures no longer signal imminent sales pressure. Our earlier reporting on dormant Silk Road wallets moving shows how closely markets watch those addresses anyway.

Oversight did not keep pace

The new posture has not silenced critics. A Justice Department inspector general audit found the Marshals Service struggled to track, value, and safeguard its seized cryptocurrency inventory, citing gaps in documentation and reconciliation (DOJ OIG). Procurement fights over the custody contracts continue in court, and watchdogs warn that billions in public assets rest on processes designed when a bitcoin cost pocket change. The state learned to hold bitcoin. Whether it learned to manage it remains an open question. Track future disposals in our market watch section.

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