The customs agency of Finland has been defining what to do with an amount of Bitcoin seized. Until now the winning choice has been not to sell, as they fear that these cryptocurrencies can end up back in the hands of criminals if it is sold. This agency is commonly known as Tulli. So, Tulli has been trying to download a total of 1.666 bitcoin for several years, even drafting a plan in September 2018 for a public auction of the cryptocurrencies. Tulli confiscated this amount of Bitcoin after a successful raid on a market dark online in September of 2016. At that time, BTC was priced at around $ 570. From this we can deduce that those 1.666 BTC were equivalent to 950.000 USD approximately. Currently, when Bitcoin was located beneath the 9.200 USD, that amount is worth more than USD $ 15 million. In the historical peak of Bitcoin, close to $ 20,000 in December of 2017, the seized would have been worth almost $ 33 million. The authorities in Finland have decided not to sell 1666 Bitcoin seized from criminals in the deep web.
Contents
What have you declared the Finnish officials about this Bitcoin seized?
Speaking with the local media, the director of Tulli Pekka Pylkkanen said: “From our point of view, the problems are specifically related to the risk of money laundering”. According to him, buyers of Bitcoin are rarely used for their common activities. However, the affirmation of Pylkkanen that the majority of the holders of cryptocurrencies used for illicit purposes is not supported by the numbers. If there is a concern of many governments of the world, due to the lack of regulation, but this is not sufficient reason to assert it. A November report of the firm analysis of blockchain Elliptic suggested that of 829 million dollars in Bitcoin, only 0.5% of all transactions were related to the deep web. Tulli is not the only government authority that has to decide what to do with the Bitcoin confiscated. By their nature, these goods normally have dollar values many times greater than when they were seized for the first time.
Other governments that have confiscated BTC. How do you have solved?
In the past, the U.s. government confiscated hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin. As a solution to this, they have organised multiple online auctions for selling confiscated. Another known case is that of Belgium, at the beginning of 2019. Here, the belgian authorities also sold the Bitcoin seized by an auction house online. Then in this year, the police in the Uk used the same auctioneer to sell more than 290,000 dollars of cryptocurrencies that they had seized a teen hacker. The official ban of the Finnish government to the sale of these Bitcoin happened in 2018. Specifically, was banned for attempting to sell the currency seized in the stock exchanges or trading platforms. In addition, it ordered the agency to keep the digital assets confiscated in a portfolio of cold storage safe. The following two tabs change content below. A degree in Liberal Studies from the Metropolitan University. Lover of innovation and a believer of the technology for the future.