8 months ago
German authorities successfully confiscated 50,000 Bitcoin, valued astatine $2.17 billion, successful mid-January from a piracy website, according to a Jan. 30 statement from the Saxony Police.
The seizure is linked to an ongoing probe into suspected unauthorized commercialized exploitation of copyrighted works nether the Copyright Act and consequent commercialized wealth laundering. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the FBI, and an undisclosed IT institution from Munich are collaborating successful the investigations.
According to the authorities, 2 unnamed suspects, including a 40-year-old German and a 37-year-old Polish man, person been identified. One of them voluntarily transferred the flagship integer plus to addresses provided by BKA.
Meanwhile, this marks the astir extended plus seizure by the German police, and the authorities are yet to find however the seized Bitcoin volition beryllium utilized.
Notably, this isn’t the archetypal clip German authorities person seized Bitcoin. In 2022, they confiscated astir €23 cardinal worthy of the apical integer plus aft dismantling the server infrastructure of the illicit darknet marketplace Hydra.
Drawing parallels, the U.S. authorities has besides undertaken significant seizures of the apical cryptocurrency. Over 50,000 BTC, valued astatine $3.6 billion, linked to the defunct darknet marketplace, Silk Road, were seized from James Zhong successful caller years.
The U.S. has besides been actively divesting its BTC holdings. On Jan. 25, the authorities revealed plans to merchantability $130 cardinal of the cryptocurrency.
Despite this selling activity, data from the Arkham Intelligence level indicates that the U.S. authorities inactive holds much than 216,000 units of BTC, valued astatine $9.56 cardinal arsenic of property time.
The station German authorities prehend grounds $2.17 cardinal successful Bitcoin from piracy website appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.
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