U.S. court allows sale of $6.5B of Silk Road seized Bitcoin

The United States government was allowed by a court to sell $6.5 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) seized from the world’s first darknet market.

A court document reveals that Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg denied a motion that would prevent the forfeiture of 69,370 BTC from the Silk Road deep web black market.  The judge gave a go-ahead to the Department of Justice to sell the $6.5 billion worth of Bitcoin with the ruling.

The document in question was filed on Dec. 30 but only started circulating online recently. Judge Seeborg was also behind other high-profile cases, recently rejecting claims by Google owner Alphabet that the company adequately informed its users of how they were tracked.

The news follows October reports that the U.S. government would be allowed to sell the seized Silk Road assets. At the time, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case concerning ownership claims of those digital assets.

Last summer, the United States government also transferred 30,175 Bitcoin originating from the Silk Road deep web market. At the time the assets were worth about $2 billion.

News of a likely major upcoming Bitcoin sell-off had an impact on the market. Bitcoin (BTC) experienced further price declines after already falling due to fears of prolonged inflation gripping the macroeconomic landscape.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at almost exactly $94,000 after losing 1% of its value over the last 24 hours — after recovering from a dip below $93,000. The price of the world’s first cryptocurrency is also 3.3% lower than where its price stood seven days ago.

Farside Investors data shows that Jan. 8 also saw $568.8 million worth of capital flee from United States-based Bitcoin spot ETFs. This is quite close to the highest ever reported, $671.9 back on Dec. 19.

Yesterday’s top loser was the Fidelity Physical Bitcoin ETF with $258.7 million leaving its coffer, followed by Ark Invest’s 21Shares Bitcoin ETF losing $148.3 million and BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF losing $124 million. Obchakevich pointed out in a recent post tweet “the beginning of 2025 was positive for Fidelity” since the asset manager “managed to beat Grayscale and secured the second place among Bitcoin ETFs.”

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