Finland Sells off $47 Million Worth of Bitcoin
- Finland sells off its seized Bitcoin as the crypto market cools, earning less than expected from the sale.
In an email statement made available on Thursday, Finnish authorities announced that it had sold 1,889.1 units of Bitcoin (BTC) on two crypto exchanges, generating $47.5 million (46.5 million Euros) from the sale. The digital assets were seized during various crypto busts and were put in the state’s care after the court’s judgment. As of last year, the value of the seized cryptos was $130 million.
But Finnish authorities opted not to sell the digital assets at the time of seizure. Now that the agency has decided to sell, their Bitcoins have lost more than $80 million of their value. It is worth noting that most of these cryptos were seized during various drug busts in 2018. However, the authorities couldn’t decide what to do with those cryptos until recently.
Finnish Authorities and Bitcoin
Twelve months ago, Finnish customs launched a tender for brokers who desired to help the authorities convert the seized cryptos to fiat. In April 2022, it eventually chose two exchanges to sell digital assets. Finnish customs claim it still has 90 bitcoins and unannounced amounts of other cryptocurrencies, which the court is yet to forfeit to the state’s coffers.
Earlier in the year, Finland’s Finance minister, Annika Saarikko, said the country intends to donate all the proceeds of the confiscated Bitcoin sale to Ukraine. Ukraine has been receiving help in various ways from nations worldwide after being invaded by Russia in February.
A spokesperson for Finnish customs states that the country’s parliament has approved the intended donation while discussing the second supplementary budget this summer. Finland’s Financial supervisory authority (FSA) is discussing a crypto regulation framework to protect investors following the rising popularity of the crypto asset class.
Finland’s Financial watchdog has stated that only licensed operators are allowed to perform crypto transactions. However, residents can perform crypto transactions on any crypto platform within and outside Finland.
The US authorities were the first to auction seized bitcoins in 2014. According to the US Marshall Service, America has sold 187,381 bitcoins in nine auctions in the last eight years. Since then, many other nations have also followed the same step. NBC reports that the US must have earned more than $179 million from the BTC sales.
However, the US hasn’t stated the total amount it has earned from selling seized bitcoins. In March last year, France sold 611 bitcoins and earned $34.5 million. The sold bitcoins were from a 2018 GateHub hack investigation.
Strangely, one buyer paid more than $36,000 for a lot of 0.11 BTC during the auction. That means he bought one BTC at $290,000. Bitcoin price has dipped by 4.36 percent in the last 24 hours and currently trades at $99,278.09. However, it is still 15 percent up over the last seven days.
Rebecca is a Senior Staff Writer at BitcoinWisdom, working hard to bring you the latest breaking news in the cryptocurrency market. In the words of Elon Musk “Buy stock in several companies that make products & services that *you* believe in. Only sell if you think their products & services are trending worse. Don’t panic when the market does. This will serve you well in the long-term.”
