The US government has auctioned off part of the $1.2 billion worth of cryptocurrencies it seized this fiscal year

In June of this year, the US government randomly auctioned off some unused Litecoin, Bitcoin, and Bitcoin Cash.

Lot 4TQSCI21402001, one of 11 lots in the four-day auction, includes 150.22567153 Litecoins and 0.00022893 Bitcoin Cash, worth more than $21,000 at today’s prices. The cryptocurrency assets were seized in a tax violation case. This kind of sale is not new to the U.S. government. For years, the U.S. government has been seizing, storing and auctioning off cryptocurrencies, as well as the usual assets one might see in high-profile criminal sting operations.

“It could be 10 boats, 12 cars, and then one of the lots is X amount of Bitcoin,” explained Jarod Koopman, chief of the IRS’s cybercrime unit.

Koopman’s team of IRS agents are sworn law enforcement officers who carry weapons and badges and execute search, arrest and seizure warrants. They have also brought back record amounts of cryptocurrency.

"In fiscal 2019, we seized about $700,000 worth of cryptocurrency, in fiscal 2020, that number reached $137 million, and so far in fiscal 2021, it has reached $1.2 billion," Koopman said. The U.S. government's fiscal year ends on September 30.

As cybercrime rises, and the digital tokens that come with it, the U.S. government’s cryptocurrency coffers are expected to swell further.

The U.S. government has no intention of exiting its sideline as a cryptocurrency broker, according to current and former federal agents and prosecutors. The business of seizing and auctioning cryptocurrencies has grown so fast that the government is turning to the private sector for help managing its storage and sales of cryptocurrencies.

It all started in 2013 when the U.S. government took down the infamous Silk Road dark web. This is where federal agents really started to come into their own when it comes to cryptocurrency searches and seizures.

During the operation that year, the US government seized approximately 30,000 bitcoins and auctioned them off in 2014 for approximately $19 million.

The bitcoins were bought by billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper, which seemed like a lot of money at the time, but if the government had kept them, they would be worth more than $1.1 billion today. Of course, investing in cryptocurrencies is not the main business of the U.S. government after all.