The Finland Custom Agency has decided to take advantage of the current crypto market bull run to sell off 1,981 bitcoins which is currently worth about $77 million that had been confiscated from various narcotics investigations.
In an interview on Thursday with local news outlet Yle, Pekka Pylkkänen, the agency’s Chief Financial Officer, disclosed that the sales would be conducted either directly by the agency or via a broker over the next couple of months.
Earlier last year, the agency could not decide what to do with the seized assets but has now decided to sell the cryptocurrency, taking advantage of the high increase in bitcoin price.
According to the report, the agency had planned on selling the cryptocurrencies via an auction in 2018 but feared that the asset could end up back in the hands of the criminals if sold.
Pylkkänen stated that although the fear of having the asset end up in criminals’ hands still exists, the current legislation has left the agency with few options but to sell the cryptocurrency.
“We had the options of handing them over to another government agency or some other party or destroying them. We concluded that alternatives other than sales are not realistic,” Pylkkänen added.
As per the report, all gains gotten from the assets’ sale would be transferred to the country’s finance ministry.
What Changed
Yle noted that a total of 1,666 BTC were confiscated during a major drug bust earlier in 2016, which was valued at less than 700,000 euros ($859,145), while the other assets were seized before the end of last year.
If the authorities had conducted the planned auction in 2018, the seized bitcoins could have been sold for a paltry amount compared to their current value, as the asset’s value has more than quadrupled since the last four years.
With Bitcoin value skyrocketing to nearly $38,731 earlier today, the customs agency hopes to take advantage of BTC’s current price, which could see the confiscated assets sold at more than $75 million if the market rally continues.
