Finnish authorities HODLing seized BTC, but it's not what you think

According to recent reports, it would appear that Finland’s customs agency has a major amount of Bitcoin in its possession, but it refuses to sell it. Its dilemma lies in the fact that it fears of what the coins might be used for by criminals if they were sold and released back into circulation.

The country’s Customs, also known as Tulli, has seized around 1,666 BTC from various scammers and other criminals, and it has been trying to find a way to offload the money for years now. In fact, in September 2018, it was even planning to hold a public auction for the coins. However, they remain concerned about the future of the coins, fearing that they will once again find their way back into the hands of criminals.

Further, the agency was also concerned about the attention that such a move would make, and whether it would jeopardize its own security. The agency’s director, Pekka Pylkkanen, stated that from Tulli’s viewpoint, the issues mostly revolve around money laundering, as the buyers of digital currencies allegedly “rarely use them for normal endeavors.”

Handling seized cryptocurrencies

The coins were originally confiscated back in 2016, when the agency made a successful bust of an online black market. Back then, the price of 1 BTC was only $570, but that still put the value of the seized amount at around $950,000. These days, the value is as high as $15 million, according to the current BTC price of $9.200 per coin.

Of course, this is still only half of the value that the seized coins had back when BTC was at its ATH. Back then, the total worth of the stash was $33 million.

Meanwhile, Tulli is not the only government authority that has such issues. The US government itself has seized hundreds of millions in BTC over the last decade, although the US government did not sit on the coins — it sold them in auctions over the years, profiting more and more as BTC value continued to grow. Belgian authorities sold major amounts of crypto several times, as well, and so did the UK.