- DOJ has reportedly approved the sale of seized 69,000 BTC, which Trump planned to repurpose for strategic reserve.
- At the time of writing, no seized BTC has been removed from the key wallets.
Crypto Twitter is abuzz with speculation that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has greenlit the sale of 69K Bitcoins [BTC]worth $6.5 billion, seized on Silk Road.
The update was first shared by media publisher DB News, citing a US official.
In an X (formerly Twitter) post on January 9, the publisher said declared,
“The US government has been given the green light to liquidate 69,000 BTC ($6.5 billion) from Silk Road, an official confirmed to DB News today. Interesting situation less than two weeks away from the new manager who promised not to sell.”
Source:
What’s next for the US BTC strategic reserve?
Market sentiment was always affected whenever updates on the movement of BTC by the US government surfaced.
Considering that newly elected President Donald Trump promised to form a US BTC strategic reserve (SBR) By using the BTC seized above, potential actions are scrutinized even more critically by the market.
Some community members speculated that the seized BTC had already been sold through a “line of credit.” One user claimed,
“The ‘seized BTC’ that was intended to be used for a ‘strategic reserve’ [under the Trump administration] had already been sold, with a line of credit approved by Coinbase.”
Some flagged the update as FUD. In fact, Arkham facts showed no balance decline in portfolios linked to seized BTC at the time of writing.
Source: Arkham
If true, however, the sale could take place before Trump’s inauguration. According to some market experts, even such a scenario would not bypass BTC en masse.
Founders of Glassnode clarified that such sales would not take place via stock exchanges, but via OTC (over-the-counter) markets. So it will not suppress the king coin.
Source:
For his part, CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju downplayed the panic, reinforcing that the potential $6.5 billion sell-off could be smoothly absorbed by the market. He said:
“Last year, $379 billion came to the market based on the realized cap: about $1 billion per day. The US government’s $6.5 billion sale could be absorbed within a week. Don’t panic.”
All things considered, prediction sites like Polymarket and Kalshi a +40% chance of a strategic reserve of US BTC priced in 2025.
However, at the time of writing, the odds of this happening in the first 100 days of the new government fell from 34% to 27%.
