Finnish customs authorities have announced that they recently sold confiscated Bitcoin worth 46.5 million euros ($47.35 million).
According to a press release issued today, 1,889.1 in Bitcoin were confiscated mostly in raids before 2018. The shipment was seized during narcotics busts and transferred to state control via court rulings, but appears to have been subject to lengthy deliberations on what to do with that.
In July 2021, the Finnish customs agency launched Tulli a tender for brokers who wanted to sell the seized crypto on behalf of the state.
Bitcoin topped its 2021 bull run shortly after and set a new all-time high watermark of $68,790 on November 10. At this price, the Finnish government’s Bitcoin stash could have fetched almost $130 million.
However, the tender was not resolved until April this year, when two companies were chosen to carry out the sale.
Tulli also says that they have other seized cryptocurrencies in their possession, but these amount to “at most a few hundred thousand euros”. Another 90 Bitcoin (worth around $2 million) are still in the agency’s possession, pending court rulings.
In April this year, Finland’s Finance Minister Annika Saarikko arrived tweeted that the country will donate”tens of millions” of euros earned through the sale of confiscated Bitcoin to Ukraine, following Russia’s invasion of the country.
This is according to a spokesperson for the customs service Decrypt that “As far as the Finnish Customs Service is aware, the total sales proceeds will be donated to Ukraine, and the donation has already been approved by the Finnish Parliament within the second supplementary budget this summer.”
Seized Bitcoin Sales
Finland is not the only country that has sold Bitcoin seized from criminals. Across the Atlantic, the US Marshals Service says it has sold 187,381 in seized Bitcoin over nine auctions since 2014, but declined to state the profit in dollars. NBC estimates it would have taken 179 million dollars from these sales.
In March 2021, French authorities auctioned off 611 Bitcoin, then worth $34.5 million, seized during the investigation into the 2019 GateHub hack. Curiously, during the auction, an optimistic buyer paid over $26,000 for a lot of 0.11 BTC, a rate of $290,000 per BTC.
Want to become a crypto expert? Get the best of Decrypt straight to your inbox.
Get the biggest crypto news + weekly recaps and more!
