Supreme Court Rejects Case Over $4.4B Silk Road Bitcoin

The US Supreme Court declined to hear Battle Born Investments’ case, which claims ownership of 69,370 BTC seized by the US from the Silk Road criminal market.

A case involving the ownership of 69,370 Bitcoin, valued at $4.38 billion that the US government took from the dark web marketplace Silk Road has been rejected by the US Supreme Court.

Battle Born Investments, a business that stated it had acquired the rights to the confiscated Bitcoin BTC$62,414.77 through a bankruptcy estate, filed the motion for review.

Due to the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case, the US government may now be able to sell the Bitcoin stack.

Before Silk Road’s closure in 2013, Battle Born could not persuade a district court in 2022 and an appeals court in 2023 that it obtained the Bitcoin through a bankruptcy claim.

It was claimed that Raymond Ngan, a bankruptcy court debtor, was the enigmatic “Individual X” who stole billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin from Silk Road.

After neither court was persuaded, A San Francisco appeal judge dismissed the case last year, stating the firm lacked a legitimate claim to the Bitcoin haul.

Only 100 to 150 of the more than 7,000 cases submitted for examination by a top US court are accepted each year.

The US government can now sell Bitcoin since there is a greater chance that its civil forfeiture action will succeed due to the Supreme Court’s ruling.

On July 29, the US government transferred about $2 billion worth of Bitcoin to the Silk Road.

The Marshals Service, which employs Coinbase Prime to hold confiscated cryptocurrency, was connected to the transfers.

It has been seen in the past that governments selling off significant quantities of Bitcoin create considerable market volatility.

This was seen personally over a few weeks in June and July when the German government sold almost 50,000 Bitcoin, valued at over $3.15 billion.

Although the US’s plans for the coins are unclear, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump promised to create a “strategic Bitcoin stockpile” if he wins the election on November 5.

Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has not stated in the open precisely what she would do with bitcoin that the US has taken.

Ross Ulbricht, who is currently serving a life sentence for several offenses, including conspiracy to commit money laundering and drug distribution, founded Silk Road in 2011.

If Trump were elected president, he would honor his pledge to free Ulbricth from prison.