Wall Street tycoon Peter Schiff said the U.S. government is preparing to sell 69,370 bitcoins, worth about $4.3 billion at current market prices, and called on U.S. listed whale MicroStrategy to lend another $4.3 billion to buy it.
According to CoinTelegraph, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the ownership case of 69,370 bitcoins seized by the U.S. government from the dark web market Silk Road, worth about $4.38 billion.
The request for review was filed by Battle Born Investments, a company that claims to have purchased rights to seized Bitcoin through bankruptcy estates. The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case could provide a license for the U.S. government to sell Bitcoin.
Schiff wrote on Twitter on Wednesday (October 9): "It looks like the US government is preparing to sell 69,370 bitcoins, worth about $4.3 billion at current market prices. The government occasionally does something smart. I think MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor should let MicroStrategy borrow another $4.3 billion to buy it. Who agrees with me?"
Battle Born previously failed to convince a district court in 2022 and an appeals court in 2023 that it obtained the Bitcoin through its bankruptcy filing after Silk Road closed in 2013.
In 2023, a San Francisco Court of Appeal judge dismissed the case, saying the company's claim to the bitcoins was illegal.
The U.S. Supreme Court hears only 100 to 150 of the more than 7,000 cases each year.
The Supreme Court’s ruling means the U.S. government’s civil forfeiture action is now more likely to succeed, allowing it to sell the bitcoin.
The U.S. government has transferred approximately $2 billion worth of Bitcoin associated with the Silk Road on July 29.
The transfers were linked to the Marshals Service, which uses Coinbase Prime to hold seized cryptocurrency.
In the past, government sales of large amounts of Bitcoin have caused considerable market volatility.
This was demonstrated when the German government sold nearly 50,000 Bitcoins worth over $3.15 billion in a few weeks in June and July.
It is unclear what the U.S. plans to do with the bitcoins, but Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has pledged to build a "strategic bitcoin reserve" if he wins the election on November 5.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has yet to publicly announce what she would do with cryptocurrency seized by the United States.
Silk Road was founded in 2011 by Ross Ulbricht, who is serving a life sentence for conspiracy to launder money and drug trafficking.
Trump has promised that if he wins the presidential election he will release Ulbricht.
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