The US government sold 9800 bitcoin on March 14

[bbc.reporter]

The coins were from the Ross Ulbrict, Silk Road case. It was also mentioned in this memorandum that the American government will be liquidating the rest of the coins they have taken from the case this year and divided into 4 batches.

Why has the government not decided to sell them through an auction or over the counter similar to what they have done before?


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Source https://www.docdroid.net/cAA99Gw/123-pdf

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[adaseb]

Yeah so far they sold 25% of their stash and will sell 75% sometime in the next year. If you look at the chart you will see that March 14th was a bullish day for bitcoin. So most likely they will be selling into strength instead of just market selling it during low liquidity or bear market. Maybe they got someone at Coinbase that picks the most liquid time to sell those coins without affecting price too much.

Really surprised why they didn't just auction them off like in the past. Someone would of paid OTC no problem. There was Justin Sun who offered but he wanted to underpay by 10% and most likely they wouldn't go for it.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

I don't think it's a very smart move. The logical thing to do would be to HODL those coins, but of course, they are not bitcoiners. At a time when cryptocurrencies are going to start being used as reserves in banks, currently limited to 1% in Europe, bitcoin is the best reserve you can have. But well, one thing is the government and another the banks, and what they want to do is spend that money, so it makes more sense to convert to fiat.

[Fundamentals Of]

If I am not mistaken many confiscated Bitcoin were also sold via auction. I also wonder why they are now doing away with the usual way of disposing seized coins. They are probably maximizing their Bitcoin's worth? Perhaps the proceeds would be higher this way? They could easily get the right timing as to its price when they do that in this manner. And they're also doing this in batches. They're seemingly trying to make the most of these seized coins.

[Tytanowy Janusz]

I don't think it's a very smart move. The logical thing to do would be to HODL those coins, but of course, they are not bitcoiners. At a time when cryptocurrencies are going to start being used as reserves in banks, currently limited to 1% in Europe, bitcoin is the best reserve you can have. But well, one thing is the government and another the banks, and what they want to do is spend that money, so it makes more sense to convert to fiat.

Silkroad was down in 2013, so they hodled for 10 years. It's longer than most of the "bitcoiners" hold. Don't you think that taking down 25% of a position after doing 200x is a wise take profit strategy? I am not sure if the timing is correct, as I think we will see another leg up, but... they have much better traders and insiders than I am.

[GreatArkansas]

(...)

(....)
I am not sure if the timing is correct, as I think we will see another leg up, but... they have much better traders and insiders than I am.

For sure they can even make a lot of profits besides selling those Bitcoins once this will happen. They can easily manipulate the media and spread some news just to pump the market and for sure, I agree with the insiders here which is really make more profits for them.

[jossiel]

Are they needing some funds now and that's why it took that long for them to decide to liquidate it and the rest for four another rounds?

I guess that they're on the right time and the last remaining batch could be sold when the bull run has come. But if they intended to sell that in the first place, they should have decided to sell it on 2021.

[ashmodeus]

is that bitcoin from silk road who got stolen ? well , if u dont know , they still have another 41,5k btc left ready to sell.
-

Are they needing some funds now and that's why it took that long for them to decide to liquidate it and the rest for four another rounds?

I guess that they're on the right time and the last remaining batch could be sold when the bull run has come. But if they intended to sell that in the first place, they should have decided to sell it on 2021.

not mean to judge, but they seems have enough funds , instead they seems playing with market i guess, lets say i am crazy and they have idea to take some of supply of btc by forcing sell in the low price.

[Husires]

For those who do not know the details of the case, you can view it here: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/04/22/seized-silk-road-bitcoin-to-clear-ross-ulbrichts-183-million-debt/
This is the file of the judicial ruling in the year 2020: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.368440/gov.uscourts.cand.368440.1.0.pdf


I think that the reason for dividing it into 4 batches is related to legal reasons, or at least until the procedure is completed, rather than being difficult to liquidate these coins, and perhaps the rest of the coins will be displayed in public auctions.

I don't think it's a very smart move. The logical thing to do would be to HODL those coins, but of course, they are not bitcoiners.

It's the US government where they can print dollars, why do they need to HODL 10K bitcoins when the GDP is over a trillion dollars?

When will the day come when Chipmixer coins will be sold.

[cryptomaniac_xxx]

If I am not mistaken many confiscated Bitcoin were also sold via auction. I also wonder why they are now doing away with the usual way of disposing seized coins. They are probably maximizing their Bitcoin's worth? Perhaps the proceeds would be higher this way? They could easily get the right timing as to its price when they do that in this manner. And they're also doing this in batches. They're seemingly trying to make the most of these seized coins.

Yeah, just surprising that they are selling it as compare to their early strategy of just auctioning it and let the buyers decide for the price. Maybe they learn from it before wherein they sold at auction and it was for a cheap price.

So they just think of offloading it by themselves, through whatever means, OTC or any other, not just in auctions. And the timing too is great as they did it when the price is going up, so win win for them and maybe moving forward the US government will sell the rest just like this method next year when we are in a big bull run.

[o48o]

Well that seemed to have very small effect but didn't hurt the small bullrun to current value at all. Imho they timed it just perfectly. I hope that it will play out as well during next 3 patches.
I wonder if they are looking at the charts to decide when to sell or do they bother to do that. I am not even sure it would be lawful for them to do that as any kind of tactical manoeuvres could be counted as market manipulation from their part.



I guess that would have twice the effect if bitcoin would be twice as valuable.

[carlfebz2]

Well that seemed to have very small effect but didn't hurt the small bullrun to current value at all. Imho they timed it just perfectly. I hope that it will play out as well during next 3 patches.
I wonder if they are looking at the charts to decide when to sell or do they bother to do that. I am not even sure it would be lawful for them to do that as any kind of tactical manoeuvres could be counted as market manipulation from their part.
I guess that would have twice the effect if bitcoin would be twice as valuable.

They could even sell all of those stashes that they do have, the community would stood strong no matter what.It is really just proving out that they are on a crisis eh?

Doesnt matter if they would really be selling it out all, its true that it didnt really put up much effect when it comes to price movement.There might be some drops but it would really be eaten up
with buys which it wouldnt really be that much an issue if they would really be selling it all.

Emotions and anxiety about such action cant really be that be blamed out specially on the community where emotion do really play a big part.

[SirLancelot]

I don't think it's a very smart move. The logical thing to do would be to HODL those coins, but of course, they are not bitcoiners. At a time when cryptocurrencies are going to start being used as reserves in banks, currently limited to 1% in Europe, bitcoin is the best reserve you can have. But well, one thing is the government and another the banks, and what they want to do is spend that money, so it makes more sense to convert to fiat.

The price of Bitcoin was around $24k on the 14th of this month, so they could easily get $4k extra per Bitcoin if they had sold them now, but we all know that they are not into that kind of calculations, and besides, they have already made enough profit on them considering the date from when they confiscated the Bitcoins until when they sold them.

And they still got 3 batches left, and I'm pretty sure that they will sell them at the right time. Even if they aren't holding them for profit, they will definitely sell them at a better price as they know it will be more money if they do so.

[jossiel]

Are they needing some funds now and that's why it took that long for them to decide to liquidate it and the rest for four another rounds?

I guess that they're on the right time and the last remaining batch could be sold when the bull run has come. But if they intended to sell that in the first place, they should have decided to sell it on 2021.

not mean to judge, but they seems have enough funds , instead they seems playing with market i guess, lets say i am crazy and they have idea to take some of supply of btc by forcing sell in the low price.

That's more likely then.

And with that money, they know that they can move the market a bit and if that's the plan to just play with the market, we'll see with the other rounds that they're going to do it.

But I'm guessing that they'll have no to little impact from the market.

[adaseb]

Since these aren’t MtGox victims I am not expecting them to dump it all at once. They were smart and basically sold it during a bull run that week.

If this was MtGox users getting their claims I would be more nervous because those would be dumped at once but since this is the USG I don’t think they really care what price they sell it for. Whether they sold at $30K or $20K do you think it matters to them? No.

[tygeade]

Since these aren’t MtGox victims I am not expecting them to dump it all at once. They were smart and basically sold it during a bull run that week.

If this was MtGox users getting their claims I would be more nervous because those would be dumped at once but since this is the USG I don’t think they really care what price they sell it for. Whether they sold at $30K or $20K do you think it matters to them? No.

Even if it's from the Mt.Gox victims I still don't think that all of them will dump their Bitcoins all at once. They already invested before in BTC because they knew its potential but how much more when their instincts are true that BTC do really have a big potential to pump big? They may only need to hold it on their own which I know they will because they already learned their lesson that keeping BTC on a centralized platform is not safe.

USG are not different from us and other institutions who invest. They also invest to earn so they know what time is best to sell their coins but it won't cause a big dump since it's stated that they will do it in 4 batches.

[pooya87]

~
For sure they can even make a lot of profits besides selling those Bitcoins once this will happen. They can easily manipulate the media and spread some news just to pump the market and for sure, I agree with the insiders here which is really make more profits for them.

I don't think news such as these has any major effects on the market anymore. We can also see that the market didn't really have any meaningful reaction to this news. Such big sales by US government are not uncommon, apart from SilkRoad they keep cracking down on businesses confiscating their coins and selling them regularly.

[el kaka22]

If you really want to find any corruption, they cashed out 215 million in btc, and spent fee of 215k as well. That's too much, in any case that is too much, it could have been a lot cheaper and they decided not to, probably something happened there but not really worthy enough for anyone big, doesn't worthy to risk your career for such small return, but definitely someone did something there.

In any case, dude was a bad guy and his coins definitely deserves top be cashed out and sold. It is not just about the fact that he was a "liberal idea" guy, he literally hired killers for money, that's good enough to put someone in jail if you ask me, no reason keep him rich.

[STT]

US Gov sells treasuries hodls BTC would probably undermine national security, sadly not a likely move they can do even if they wanted.   They should be reducing their debt, buying it back for the valuable thing its supposed to be as a kind of investment.   A good company will buy back its debt but we have the scenario where debt is too cheap and its better to sell debt and buy back equity to avoid paying any dividends.   The world is topsy turvy, thankfully BTC is not politics inversely its worth far more.

[adaseb]

The us government is in so much debt that selling these bitcoins won’t help them at all. They are trillions in debt and paying huge amounts of interest every day on that debt. This is a drop in the bucket. They aren’t doing this to save their economy even if they knew Bitcoin would rise in the near future.

They need to reduce spending in another ways. They need to reduce their military spending and not spend so much fighting climate change. They are digging themselves into a huge hole and no way they will get out. They will just print money to pay all these debts and make inflation worse.