Spending Rp16 Trillion, Justin Sun Wants To Buy Bitcoin Confiscated By The US Government

JAKARTA - One of the world's leading crypto figures, Justin Sun, founder of Tron (TRX), expressed interest in buying Bitcoin (BTC) confiscated by the United States government. The Bitcoin is planned to be sold by the government to the market in the near future.

Knowing the plan, Sun showed interest in stating that he was willing to pay 10 percent lower than the market price for Bitcoin. The confiscated Bitcoin is worth more than USD 1.1 billion (equivalent to IDR 16.4 trillion).

Sun said he wanted to help the crypto market by preventing a possible price drop if the government sold the Bitcoin publicly. He also said he believed in Bitcoin's long-term potential as a valuable digital asset.

The Bitcoin Sun wants to buy comes from the Silk Road hack, a darknet website that sells illegal goods such as drugs and weapons. The US government managed to confiscate about 60,000 BTC from a hacker named James Zhong in 2012. Zhong pleaded guilty to fraud charges and will be sentenced on April 14.

The US government sold part of the Bitcoin in March for an average price of US$21,800 (Rp325 million) per BTC. The remaining unsold Bitcoin is estimated to be worth more than US$1.14 billion (Rp17 trillion) at current prices of US$27,588 (Rp411 million) per BTC.

Sun is a crypto entrepreneur and investor known for his project Tron (TRX), a blockchain platform that supports decentralized applications and digital tokens. Sun is also known as the first buyer of NFT Beeple for 69 million US dollars (equivalent to IDR 1 trillion) and as the owner of BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol. BitTorrent also has its own original token, namely BTT.