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The U.S. government wants to dispose of more than 41,000 Bitcoin (BTC) confiscated in connection with the notorious Silk Road darknet marketplace.
As revealed on March 31 in a related court document from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in the case against James Zhong, government authorities have already started selling the total 51,352 BTC from the Silk Road case. According to the document, as of March 14, 9,861 BTC have already been sold off for proceeds of more than $215 million, which now leaves just under 41,491 BTC.
n November, James Zhong had pleaded guilty to stealing the bitcoin in question from the Silk Road marketplace in 2012. U.S. law enforcement had then seized the more than 50,000 BTC – at a then equivalent of more than $3 billion – from Zhong’s home in November 2021. While this was one of the largest sums of cryptocurrencies ever confiscated by U.S. police until February 2022, before a whopping $3.6 billion was seized in connection with the Bitfinex hack.
This again shows that regulatory progress is becoming visible, fraudulent intent is being tracked and punished, and these Bitcoins are being released back to investors.

The Kraken logo will be featured on Williams Racing cars thanks to a new sponsorship deal, with this in turn incorporating parts of BTC’s project design. A section of Bitcoin’s (BTC) whitepaper will soon be emblazoned on the race car of Formula One team Williams Racing. The action is part of a promotional campaign by the American crypto exchange Kraken.
As confirmed by Williams, the crypto trading platform’s octopus-shaped logo will be designed as an imprint in such a way that text excerpts from the Bitcoin project draft of 2008 can be recognized in it. Accordingly, both the introduction and a passage of text about transactions from the white paper entitled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” would be printed on the race car.

The Ethereum Foundation has set April 12 as the launch date for the long-awaited Shanghai and Capella upgrades – also known collectively as Shapella.
Among other things, the upgrades enable withdrawals from Ethereum 2.0 staking. The corresponding staking contract was originally set up in December 2020. Initially, only funds could be created here – without the possibility of withdrawing them – which is now to change with the joint upgrade.
So far, more than 18 million ETH with a current equivalent value of just under $32.5 billion have been locked up in Ethereum’s Staking Contract since December 2020. The majority of users rely on so-called liquid staking derivatives (LSD) via centralized and decentralized crypto exchanges, because via such investment products their funds are liquid from the start, so for them there is no new reason to sell after the Shapella upgrade.
Decentralized LSD platforms like Lido currently account for nearly 33.2% of all ETH investments in staking on the Beacon Chain. Another 27.1% is pinned down via centralized crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken, meaning that a total of 60.3% of all ETH in staking is invested via liquid staking.
The remaining 40% are again “illiquid” ETH, as these are put directly into staking by crypto users or third parties. And it is this portion of the supply that the new upgrade could now free up and put up for sale.
Since some of the illiquid stakers might decide to put their funds directly back into staking, Nansen estimates that the resulting selling pressure will settle at 1.2 million – 3 million ETH, although of course not all ETH will be put on the market at the same time. In addition, there is unlikely to be a situation where all stakers will want to simultaneously book out their ETH after the upgrade, causing increased transaction fees, as there is no fee for the bookouts and they will. Also, only a maximum of 16 partial or full withdrawals per block will be allowed, so investors will have to proceed in order.
Nansen therefore expects that the selling pressure on the Ethereum price will be divided into three phases.
Thus, there will not be a big “sell-off”, but a closer eye should be kept on the price development in April.