There are many stories about bitcoins lost long ago and found today worth a fortune. The Bulgarian government may just be in possession of bitcoin seized a few months earlier, worth as much as about 18% of the country's debt. There are many stories about bitcoins lost long time ago and found today worth a fortune. The government of Bulgaria may just be in possession of bitcoins seized a few months earlier, worth as much as about 18% of the country's debt. The bitcoins in question were confiscated in May of this year by a criminal group operating in the Balkans. The criminals were involved in installing Trojans on government customs computers. The criminals' tactic was to recruit corrupt customs officials in Greece, Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, and Bulgaria to infect customs IT systems. Once the virus was installed, the criminals were able to manage cargo and customs information. A total of 23 people were detained, 5 of them were Bulgarian customs officials. Police seized communication devices, computers, tablets and bank documents. One of the computers contained... 213,519 bitcoin. Today with the exchange rate hovering around $15000 the value of the seized bitcoin is well over $3 billion. The whole situation is similar to that of Silk Road, where 144 000BTC was seized. Bitcoins were sold at several auctions. Whether the Bulgarian government will decide to sell bitcoin is unknown. At this point, there are no plans yet for the seized cryptocurrency. The eventual sale itself will not be easy if only for legal reasons. Interestingly, according to Bulgarian media, the prosecutor in charge of the case has just denied the seizure of bitcoin, noting that the case is ongoing and computers are to be sent to the U.S. for expertise. In May, however, the information about the seizure appeared... There are also rumors that bitcoins were transferred to other addresses before Bulgarian services were able to deal with them. Purely theoretically (speculation) a repeat of Silk Road is also possible, where two officers made a theft of some of the seized bitcoin. It is also worth mentioning that a few days ago, Bulgarian banks cut off the local exchanges from the funds, terminating their contracts at the same time. Interestingly, officially this was not a government action related to regulation. So it seems that it is a collusion of banks or quiet recommendations of local regulators. It's also not out of the question that the two cases are connected in some way. Tags bank bitcoin btc Bulgaria cryptocurrencies government banks
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