On July 12, an address associated with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) was recorded to have moved 9,825 BTC. This is likely a planned and pre-announced BTC selling activity by the DOJ.
The intention behind this transaction by the DOJ cannot be confirmed. However, data from CryptoQuant indicates that this is the first significant change in the Bitcoin balance held from the Silk Road black market, which was associated with illicit trading activities.
Silk Road was the name of an illicit online marketplace operating on the dark web, specializing in illegal buying and selling activities. It was shut down by the FBI in October 2013, and a significant amount of Bitcoin was seized by the government. At that time, the price of Bitcoin was still below $200.
According to Blockworks, the DOJ has planned to sell up to 41,500 BTC seized from Silk Road. The current price of BTC is around $30,000, meaning the BTC holdings are equivalent to approximately $1.3 billion. Previously, the DOJ sold over 9,861 BTC on Coinbase at a price of $21,000 in March.
The news about the DOJ’s plan to sell seized BTC from Silk Road was announced shortly after the release of the US CPI macroeconomic news. Despite the lower-than-expected CPI, which led to an increase in the price of Gold and a decrease in DXY, Bitcoin remained within the range of around $30,000. It appears that both internal news and macroeconomic news did not have any significant impact on the price behavior of Bitcoin.