US Supreme Court Denies Case Over Ownership of $4.38B Bitcoin Seized from Silk Road

The US government can now sell the seized digital assets that once belonged to Silk Road.

Battle Born Inv. v. United States, No. 22-1447, appeared on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Oct. 7 order list.

The high court was asked to review a lower court’s decision that rejected Battle Born’s claim to 69,370 Bitcoin (BTC) seized by the U.S. government from the dark web marketplace Silk Road.

Battle Born claimed it had purchased the rights to the seized BTC through a bankruptcy estate, but the firm was unsuccessful in convincing the courts to award it the BTC through a bankruptcy claim after Silk Road was shut down in 2013.

The Supreme Court’s decision not to take up the case again clears the way for the U.S. government to sell the seized digital assets that once belonged to Silk Road.

In mid-August 2024, financial lawyer Scott Johnsson predicted that the U.S. Marshals will be selling Silk Road’s Bitcoin assets after a post by Founders Fund shared data from Bitcoin explorer Tokenview, which showed that more than 19,000 BTC had been moved into a Coinbase account.

“Yes, US Marshal Service (USMS) is almost certainly selling silk road bitcoin. Joey is right (at least in the present). USMS has been sending BTC to a custodial address required by the terms of the servicing agreement that USMS entered into with Coinbase in June,” Johnsson wrote on Twitter.

“Given the timing and the size of theめにゅー, this is almost certainly the next installment of the proceeds from selling bitcoin seized on Silk Road, which USMS began to sell in 2023.”

Earlier that month, a U.S. government wallet sent 10,000 BTC to crypto brokerage platform Coinbase Prime, according to Arkham Intel.

U.S. authorities sent the stack of Bitcoin to a wallet called “bc1ql” two weeks ago, and the wallet, in turn, sent a portion of the BTC to another wallet, which then sent it to Coinbase Prime, according to the crypto data firm.

Typically, governments offloading large amounts of cryptocurrency have been shown to cause considerable market volatility in the past.

This was evident as the price of BTC dropped 3.6% following the news, though the decline in price began before Coinbase Prime received the seized Silk Road funds.

In July, crypto.news reported that the U.S. government also sent $2 billion in BTC, with the recipient believed to be Coinbase.

The transfer came not long after former President Donald Trump announced his intention to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve if he is reelected.

Silk Road was an online black market and the first modern darknet market, created in 2011 by Ross Ulbricht, who operated under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts.”

In October 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation shut down the Silk Road site and arrested Ulbricht, who is currently serving a life sentence for conspiring to commit money laundering, distributing drugs and other convictions.

In May 2024, Donald Trump pledged to release Ulbricht from prison if he wins the presidency.

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