The Block reported the U.S. Marshals Service signed a contract with Coinbase:
The Marshals Service has a specific requirement for "managing and disposing of large quantities of popular cryptocurrency assets."
The law enforcement agency did not buy any cryptocurrency. It seized it from criminals. Flashback to 2020 when the Marshals Service sought bids for thousands of seized bitcoins.
Coinbase was rated the #2 cryptocurrency exchange in 2020. #1 was Binance which settled with the Justice Department for $4.3 billion for:
“knowingly failed” to register as a money services business and “willfully” failed to implement an effective anti-money laundering program to “profit from the U.S. market without complying with U.S. law.”In other words, criminals were welcomed.
As for the 2020 auction my wise friend wrote:
Why do I have to bid for a freely exchanged asset that is liquid throughout the world on a minute to minute basis? Why wouldn't the confiscated asset just be liquidated on a first in-first out basis at the exchange rate at that time? And how does a federal agency set up an account that the SEC has ongoing litigation with and basically legitimizes the exchange?
Meanwhile:
German authorities have begun making regular sales of their multi-billion dollar tranche of bitcoin, which was seized through various criminal cases.
Government sales helped drive down the value of bitcoin, as well as the attempted recovery of funds from bankrupt exchange Mt. Gox (which failed in 2014 after a massive hack stole millions in bitcoin). Consider what Wired stated a week after that event:
Bitcoin promises to give a bank account to anyone with a mobile phone, no ID required. It's clearly an amazing and potentially world-changing technology -- the first viable, decentralized, reliable form of digital cash.Wait. Didn't a crypto friendly bank fail in 2023? Yes, and it recently settled with the SEC over anti-money laundering charges.
The crypto-friendly Silvergate Bank settled charges with a litany of government agencies and paid $63 million in fines over suits that it had not sufficiently monitored nearly $1 trillion in crypto transactions, including those from FTX. Further, regulators had argued that the bank had misled the public as to the effectiveness of its internal compliance programs for crypto customers.
So bad people steal crypto, use crypto and crypto exchanges have been lax in monitoring them. With that as the backdrop, the same bunch that brought us predatory social media are pushing politicians to make crypto more available to the public? Yes, and they want it in your retirement account.
Aren't elected officials responsible for ensuring the dollar remains a stable and safe currency? Absolutely.
My wise friend noted:
So this is just semantics and the whole game is rigged beyond all of our imaginations and whether we accept it or not these crap coins are our FIBERTY coin. Guess we exchanged Lady Liberty for a prostitute and the American Eagle for a pigeon.
Something just fell from the sky. Beware the droppings.