US Government Boncos After Selling 9,861 Bitcoins In March

The US government suffered losses from bitcoin for selling thousands of BTC at a low price. (Photo; Doc. Coincheckup)

JAKARTA - Efforts to sell thousands of Bitcoins in the open market have resulted in significant losses to the US government. In March, the government sold 9,861 BTC which at that time was worth around 216 million US dollars (Rp 3.4 trillion).

Not long ago, seven months later, the BTC value had jumped to 332 million US dollars (Rp 5.2 trillion), creating a difference of 116 million US dollars (Rp1.8 trillion).

This Bitcoin was obtained by the US primarily through confiscations related to criminal proceedings. By the end of this year, the government plans to sell the remaining 41,490 BTC confiscated from James Zhong, who pleaded guilty to fraud via transfer after being accused of transaction manipulation on the Silk Road black market.

While there are plans to sell more Bitcoins this year, the US government still stores Bitcoin worth more than $5.5 billion. According to a recent analysis by researchers at 21.co, the huge Bitcoin stack represents nearly 1% of the total supply of Bitcoin in circulation.

The company that tracks government-linked crypto wallets reveals that this figure is a "low-end limit estimate" of US government ownership based on publicly available information.

The largest crypto asset value by market cap has seen a significant increase, soaring from US$16,615 (or around Rp263 million) on January 1 to US$33,575 (Rp532 million) at the time of writing.