US government transfers nearly $4 million worth of seized bitcoins to Coinbase

The US government transferred 58,742 BTC, worth nearly $4 million, to crypto exchange Coinbase on Monday.

According to the latest data collected by blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, the transfer came from an address called “US Government: Seized Funds from Ryan Farace,” identified on the blockchain as 3B2jEBZi8fJWGEDrh6Pe7hDMaJ6iGfFtaU.

Those funds were seized three years ago from Maryland resident Ryan Farace, who was convicted in 2018 of selling Alprazolam, the generic form of Xanax, on the dark web.

Ryan’s father, Joseph Farace, was later also convicted of laundering and trafficking bitcoins destined for federal forfeiture. The Department of Justice eventually recovered 2,933 BTC from the father-son pair and announced plans to liquidate the holdings in January of this year.

While Ryan Farace was sentenced to 54 months, his father received 19 months for the same charge.

The possible liquidation of funds through Coinbase is unlikely to significantly affect the spot price, in contrast to the recent large sale of BTC by the German state of Saxony.

On June 19, the German state of Saxony began downloading seized bitcoins it had seized from movie piracy website movie2k. By July 12th, he had sold his entire deposit of almost 50,000 BTC and generated almost $2.87 billion in the process. That rush sale generated a profit of more than $740 million compared to its acquisition cost of $2.13 billion in January.

However, the sell-off put enormous bearish pressure on the market and even caused the price of bitcoin to briefly fall below $55,000.

At the time of writing, BTC was trading around $67,000, where it has remained for most of the past week.

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