German authorities seize record $2.17 billion in Bitcoin from piracy website

German authorities successfully confiscated 50,000 Bitcoin, valued at $2.17 billion, in mid-January from a piracy web voice online, per a Jan. 30 assertion from the Saxony Police.

The seizure is linked to an ongoing investigation into suspected unauthorized industrial exploitation of copyrighted works under the Copyright Act and subsequent industrial money laundering. The Federal Criminal Police Discipline of work (BKA), the FBI, and an undisclosed IT firm from Munich are collaborating within the investigations.

In step with the authorities, two unnamed suspects, including a 40-300 and sixty five days-frail German and a 37-300 and sixty five days-frail Polish man, were identified. One of them voluntarily transferred the flagship digital asset to addresses provided by BKA.

In the period in-between, this marks basically the most broad asset seizure by the German police, and the authorities are but to be taught how the seized Bitcoin will be utilized.

Notably, this isn’t the first time German authorities hang seized Bitcoin. In 2022, they confiscated roughly €23 million worth of the tip digital asset after dismantling the server infrastructure of the illicit darknet market Hydra.

Drawing parallels, the U.S. govt has also undertaken valuable seizures of the tip cryptocurrency. Over 50,000 BTC, valued at $3.6 billion, linked to the defunct darknet market, Silk Toll road, had been seized from James Zhong in most contemporary years.

The U.S. has also been actively divesting its BTC holdings. On Jan. 25, the govt. revealed plans to promote $130 million of the cryptocurrency.

Despite this promoting job, recordsdata from the Arkham Intelligence platform indicates that the U.S. govt mute holds bigger than 216,000 items of BTC, valued at $9.56 billion as of press time.