US selling 69K seized bitcoins may disrupt Trump’s idea of a cryptocurrency reserve

In December of 2024, a US court granted DOJ permission to sell off 69,370 bitcoins, which was seized in the biggest cryptocurrency bust to date. At the current price of bitcoin below 92 thousand dollars these bitcoins are valued at almost 640 million dollars and outlets concerned with cryptos are indicating that DOJ officials have said that they intend to act on selling the assets as the court directed them to. The DOJ had stated in briefs that the fluctuations of the bitcoin price were a highly urgent justification to apply for a permission for the sale.

These bitcoins were first stolen from this known black market store Silk Road where one was only able to shop with bitcoins in June 2012 before the site was closed down by the FBI. The US later found the stolen bitcoins in 2020 during other searches on Silk Road and obtained a consent agreement in the same year from the hacker to transfer the bitcoins to the government. Whether the government’s seizure of those bitcoins was proper has been disputed by Battle Born Investments a company which acquired the purchases of bankruptcy estate of an individual, who they considered to be the owner of the bitcoins seized or anyways ‘‘related’’ to the hacker.

When efforts to get back the bitcoins in a court case proved futile, Battle Born sought to reveal the identity of the hacker through a FOIA but this led to another court case. Still, in late December, the court sided with the US government to say that the hacker had privacy rights of an individual under investigation and should not be identified. That put an end to Battle Born’s right to the bitcoins and created the path for the government to sell the digital asset.

As soon as the news came out, the price of cryptocurrencies, particularly bitcoin, declined due to rumors of the DOJ selling them and others attributed to changes made to the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy framework and fresh data on Treasury Department that triggered inflation fears. Indeed, ALG pointed out that, if the sale is triggered, it can influence the price of bitcoin.

But maybe even more significantly, it could disrupt Donald Trump’s strategy to create the US bitcoin reserve. In December, while the DOJ sought approval to sell the bitcoins, Trump confirmed a bitcoin reserve was necessary stating, “We’re going to do something tremendous with crypto because we don’t want China, or anybody else … but others are adopting it, and we need to lead,” Forbes said. Beginning in July, Trump became a “pro-crypto president”; he vowed to ease restrictions on cryptocurrencies and said that with cryptocurrency we could ‘eliminate’ the US national debt. Axios said the Trump wants to establish bitcoin reserves in the US using bitcoins that he acquires from criminals, hence, it does not make sense for him to sell the biggest bitcoin treasure ever if he intends to take the US in that direction.

According to analysts interviewed for the article, there is now about 60% that Trump will implement a bitcoin treasury reserve this year. And if that occurs – the price of bitcoin can vastly increase – even reach up to $225 thousand per coin prior to the end of 2025, according to their calculations. That forecast must make a sale even less attractive to some pro-crypto regulators who would instead prefer stock piling to actually selling.