The post Supreme Court Greenlights Sale of $4.38b of Silk Road Bitcoin appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

The Supreme Court announced on Monday it had denied a certiorari petition — a Supreme Court appeal — in a case closely watched by the crypto community that is set to determine the fate of 69k Bitcoin seized by law enforcement in November 2020.  In the rejected appeal, the company named Battle Born Investments claimed it had purchased rights to this seized Bitcoin through a bankruptcy estate tied to a person named Raymond Ngan, presenting itself as “an innocent owner of all of the Defendant Property”. The company argued that Ngan was “Individual X,” the unnamed hacker who stole the Bitcoin from the Silk Road and then surrendered the wallet to law enforcement.  However, both the federal court in California and later a federal appeals court rejected Battle Born’s claim, stating that they were not convinced that Ngan was the real identity behind “Individual X.” Since Battle Born’s claim was based on Ngan’s supposed ownership of the funds, the courts ruled that the company had no valid right to the Bitcoin. Now that the Supreme Court has declined to hear the case, the lower courts’ ruling will likely prevail, meaning that few obstacles remain in the way of liquidating the $4.38 billion stash of BTC. While it will certainly take a string of bureaucratic formalities for the US Marshals Service to start the auction, a portion of Bitcoin worth some $2.6 billion has already been transferred to the Coinbase Prime deposit wallet, which may indicate that the sale may start soon. On the other hand, it’s known that the exchange has a custody deal with the regulator, so it might as well just hold the assets on behalf of the Marshals Service.  The origins of the largest Bitcoin seizure to date Ross Ulbricht, aka “Dread Pirate Roberts,” created and ran…

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Filed under: News - @ October 8, 2024 1:20 am