US Feds Leave Substantial Funds Behind From Bitcoin Forks: Report

US feds leave substantial funds behind from Bitcoin forks according to crypto research company Coinfirm, that claims there are multiple crypto wallets seized from criminals over the years with coins still in them. These wallets were seized as a result of multiple “forks” that issued new crypto assets and traded on public markets so now, let’s read more in today’s latest BTC news.

The company traced most of these funds back to the Silk Road wallet seized by the United States Department of Justice at the start of the month. The regulator announced that they gathered over $1 billion that belong to the now de-funct darknet marketplace at the time but there’s no info about the forked funds.

Utterly fascinating to read – the BTC stolen from the Silk Road was iron handed by the hacker from a value of $354,000 to $1,000,000,000+.

Now it has entered the supply side. Material net negative, even if institutional buyers are eager and willing. pic.twitter.com/zRMJa02oPR

— light (@lightcrypto) November 5, 2020

Confirm said that the wallet owners could still have access to the forked funds which were eventually worth millions but are now worth about $400,000. According to a blog post from Coinfirm, US Feds leave huge funds behind in these wallets as a result of various BTC forks like Bitcoin Private, Super Bitcoin, and BTC diamond among the few that the US government overlooked and left in the hands of the people that have access to the private keys of the main wallet.

The total worth of $310,000 in BCD, $66,000 in SBTC, and $11,000 in BTCP still belong in these wallets. Confirm said that the “reclaim fork” service which uses cryptographic tracing efforts to locate out forked funds has helped to identify a dozen cases in which the law enforcement authorities could have left substantial funds accessible to suspects instead of seizing them properly. The tool is available to both institutions and retailers to claim the forked tokens that were not claimed earlier.

The seized funds mean that the mighty US government is now sitting on $1 billion worth of Bitcoin but the Federal Reserve is obligated to sell the assets to USD which it still hasn’t done. Crypto-focused lawyer Preston Byrne commented in a now-deleted tweet at the time:

 “Controversial opinion: the DOJ should not sell seized Bitcoins, it should begin stockpiling a national reserve of BTC to back the USD after the fiat era ends.”

Speaking of seized funds, Chainalysis is a blockchain analysis company that launched a program to help governments better store ill-gotten crypto seized during investigations. The company helped the DOJ track down the 69K Silk Road-tied BTC which the US Government seized last week. Cryptocurrencies came a long way since BTC free-fell of the Silk Road era but they are still a popular opinion if you are looking to conduct illegal businesses on the dark web.