Finland Customs Generate $47 Million Selling Seized Bitcoin (BTC)

• The tender wasn’t finalized until April this year when two businesses were selected.
• The agency still has 90 Bitcoin (worth roughly $2 million) in its control.

The Finnish customs officials auctioned a total of €46.5 million ($47.35 million) in seized Bitcoin. A press statement today claims that the 1,889.1 Bitcoin was seized in searches that were mostly before 2018. As evidence suggests, the haul was taken during drug seizures. Still, it has been subject to lengthy discussions regarding its disposition since it was placed under state custody by court orders.

At Peak $130M Could Have Been Made

In July of that year, Finnish customs agency Tulli published a tender in July 2021 for brokers who wished to sell the confiscated crypto on the state’s behalf. – A few days later, on November 10, Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $68,790, marking the pinnacle of its 2021 bull run. At this pricing, Finland’s Bitcoin stockpile might have generated about $130 million for the government.

The tender wasn’t finalized until April this year when two businesses were selected to complete the transaction. Tulli also claims to have “some hundreds of thousands of euros at most” in confiscated cryptocurrency. The agency still has 90 Bitcoin (worth roughly $2 million) in its control, awaiting judicial verdicts.

Finnish Finance Minister Annika Saarikko tweeted in April that Finland would pay “tens of millions” of euros to Ukraine when Russia invaded the nation after the sale of stolen Bitcoin. 

The sale of Bitcoin confiscated from criminals isn’t limited to Finland. Since 2014, the US Marshalls have sold 187,381 bitcoins at auction, but they have neglected to specify how much money was made from the sales in dollar terms. NBC believes that these sales would have netted $179 million.

According to CMC, the Bitcoin price today is $22,551.01 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $42,439,904,063 USD. Bitcoin is down 6.43% in the last 24 hours.

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