Silk Road Bitcoin: US Supreme Court denies $4.4b ownership case request from Battle Born

The United States Supreme Court has denied Battle Born Investment’s case over ownership of 69,370 Bitcoin — worth $4.38 billion — that the US seized from the dark web marketplace Silk Road.

The US Supreme Court published an order list on Oct. 7 which featured a request for review from Battle Born Investments regarding the ownership of 69,370 BTC seized from the Silk Road black market.

Battle Born Investments claimed it had purchased rights to the seized Bitcoin(BTC) through a bankruptcy estate. Though, the firm failed to convince the courts in 2022 and again in 2023 when it appealed to acquire the BTC through a bankruptcy claim after Silk Road shut down in 2013.

The Supreme Court’s refusal to take on the case yet again, means that the US government can now sell the seized digital assets that once belonged to Silk Road.

In mid-Aug. 2024, financial lawyer Scott Johnsson predicted that the U.S Marshalls will be selling Silk Road’s Bitcoin assets soon after a post from Founders Fund shared data from Bitcoin explorer Tokenview revealed that more than 19,000 BTC had been moved into a Coinbase account.

Earlier that month, a U.S. government wallet sent 10,000 BTC to crypto brokerage platform, Coinbase Prime. According to Arkham Intel. U.S. authorities sent the stack of Bitcoin to a wallet named “bc1ql” two weeks ago.

Usually governments offloading large amounts of cryptocurrency has been shown to cause considerable market volatility in the past. This is proven by how BTC prices dropped 3.6% after the news surfaced, although the price dip began before Coinbase Prime received the seized Silk Road funds.

In July, crypto.news reported that the U.S. government also sent $2 billion in BTC, with the recipient believed to be Coinbase. The transfer was made not long after former president Donald Trump announced his desire to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

Silk Road was an online black market and the first modern darknet market created in 2011 by Ross Ulbricht, who operated under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts”.

In Oct. 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation shut down the Silk Road site and arrested Ulbricht. He is currently serving a life sentence for conspiring to commit money laundering, distributing drugs among other convictions.

In May 2024, Donald Trump pledged to release Ulbricth from prison should he win the presidency.