Since 2014, the United States government has seized a total of 185,230 Bitcoins through criminal investigations. Once the US acquires any Bitcoin, the US Marshals then auctions them off to the public. Cryptocurrency enthusiast, Jameson Lopp, recently created a portal that approximated the total value of US government-seized Bitcoin at $151 million USD. Another enthusiast, Hard Fork, used the portal to estimate that each Bitcoin was sold for about $818 on average. However, had the US Marshals waited to sell the Bitcoins in their entirety, Lopp’s portal suggests they would have netted over $1.5 billion USD, assuming they were sold for $10,000 or more. In the UK, the Crown auctioned off its seized Bitcoin for the first time ever for $396,000 USD, or $8,365 each, which was well above the $8,000 market rate at the time. One country that has sold its Bitcoin for even higher profits is Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government recently sold about 200,000 Bitcoins to Asian investors and sovereign wealth funds for about $16,000 USD each. It’s apparent that governments are even susceptible to the volatile nature of trading cryptocurrency, which is apparent given that some have made large profits selling off their coins, while others not so much.
