Less than a week after the German government concluded its $2.8 billion sale of confiscated bitcoin, the US government appears to be gearing up to do the same.
Data from blockchain analytics firm Arkham shows that a wallet labelled “U.S. Government: Ryan Farace Seized Funds” moved 58.742 bitcoins worth $3.96 million on Monday.
The wallet sent the funds to centralized crypto exchange Coinbase, which typically implies that the sender intends to sell coins through the platform. At the time of writing, the US government still holds $14.6 billion worth of crypto, with over 97% of it in bitcoin.
The funds transferred on Monday were seized more than three years ago from Ryan Farace, who was convicted for selling Xanax for bitcoin on dark web marketplace Silk Road, where he was known by the vendor name “XANAXMAN.”
Farace was sentenced to 54 months in federal prison last January, and this year, his father Joseph Farace was also handed a 19-month sentence for a money laundering conspiracy.
Prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) claim that the older Farace helped his son transfer thousands of bitcoins to third parties. Ryan Farace reportedly wrote his wallet addresses on the back cover of a prison library book and emailed it to his father. The two are said to have discussed the transfers using a coded language.
Federal agents ultimately intercepted one of these transfers and recovered 2,933 BTC ($196 million) from the duo.
The amount of BTC moved on Monday represents under 1% of bitcoin’s $42 billion in daily trading volume, and is unlikely to have a sizeable impact on the price of the asset. At the time of writing, bitcoin was trading at $66,500, down 1.08% over the last 24 hours.
