Analysts have discovered a British police crypto wallet with $4,1 billion worth of confiscated BTC

Earlier, the country’s authorities adopted an amendment allowing the destruction of seized cryptocurrencies

05.03.2024 - 14:18

2 min

What’s new? Blockchain analysts of the Arkham Intelligence platform discovered a crypto wallet belonging to the UK authorities. It holds 61 000 bitcoins, worth more than $4,1 billion at the exchange rate at the time of writing. The assets were seized back in 2018 from the creators of the fraudulent investment scheme Jian Wen and Zhimin Qian, who were wanted by Chinese authorities.

Source: Twitter.com

What else is known? The fraudulent scheme operated in the PRC between 2014 and 2017. Seized bitcoins were purchased by Qian with funds from defrauded investors. In 2021, the assets came into the possession of the London police.

On April 26, an amendment to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 will come into force in the UK that will allow authorities to freeze criminal crypto assets without conviction and, if necessary, burn them.

In January, German authorities carried out the largest bitcoin seizure in the country’s history. During the investigation of tax violations of websites with pirated content, 50 000 BTC were seized, the value of which currently exceeds $3,37 billion.

Earlier, the US authorities announced their intention to sell 2875 BTC confiscated from Silk Road darknet marketplace drug dealers Ryan Faras and Sean Bridges in 2021. In November 2021, the US Department of Justice seized $3,36 billion worth of bitcoins from Silk Road hackers, the largest asset forfeiture in history. In October 2023, the value of bitcoins seized by the US government reached $5 billion.

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