The UK government may be preparing to sell seized cryptocurrency, with the possibility of funding.

## Seized virtual coin estimated at 1 trillion yen

The UK's Home Office is considering selling seized crypto assets (virtual coins). The government is estimated to hold over £5 billion (approximately ¥996 billion) in seized virtual coins, according to a report by The Telegraph.

Additionally, the procurement group of the country's police is calling for bids from companies to operate a centralized system for storing and selling the seized virtual currency.

The total amount of cryptocurrency seized by the UK is unknown, but at least 61,000 BTC has been recovered from funds originating from a Ponzi scheme run by Chinese scammers.

The victims are demanding the return of their funds, but the prosecution is seeking permission from the High Court to retain the seized bitcoins and hand them over to the Ministry of Finance.

In the UK, Prime Minister Starmer is advocating for a more restrained approach to reducing welfare spending, amid rising borrowing costs due to national debt and a situation of low economic growth, where the Treasury is called upon to find additional funding.

According to a bidding announcement issued by the procurement company Blue Light Commercial, owned by the police of the country, under the commission of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the UK government is also soliciting operational contracts for a centralized service tasked with the storage and sale of seized virtual currencies.

The contract amount is expected to be up to 53.7 million dollars (approximately 8 billion yen), with a duration of at least 4 years.

The bidding announcement stated that "the average period from the seizure of assets to the conclusion (realization) of legal procedures is within one year, but in more complex cases, it can take 3 to 4 years." Therefore, even if the sale of seized assets is realized, the timing remains uncertain at this point.

Additionally, Bitcoin specialist journalist Decentra Suze noted in a post on X that the victims are seeking the return of their Bitcoin and that the UK authorities will not sell it until the legal proceedings are concluded.

Aidan Larkin, CEO of the asset seizure specialist company Asset Reality, commented that the seizure of cryptocurrency related to crime would become a means of financing that benefits the government.

From the perspective of illegal activities, it is as if oil is flowing in the form of cryptocurrency right at our feet. Due to seizures, there is a possibility of hundreds of millions of pounds flowing into the UK each year.

So far, countries that have seized virtual currencies as assets related to crime have frequently conducted sales.

For example, in July 2024, Germany gradually sold 50,000 BTC seized from the movie piracy site "Movie2K" over several weeks, earning a total of 2.88 billion dollars (approximately 428 billion yen).

In 2018, Bulgaria sold 213,500 BTC that had been seized from a cybercrime organization.

On the other hand, it has been pointed out that since Bitcoin has continued to rise in value over the long term, holding onto it without selling would have increased one's assets. For example, Bulgaria had realized a total sale profit of about $3.5 billion (approximately 520 billion yen), but at the current market value, it has reached $25 billion (approximately 3.7 trillion yen), which is enough to cover the country's national debt of $24 billion.

In this context, the U.S. government has established an executive order allowing former President Donald Trump to keep the seized bitcoins and other virtual currencies without selling them.