The United Kingdom has reportedly considered more than 5 billion British pounds ($ 6.7 billion) of Bitcoin seized to help fill a deficit in the country’s budget.
The home office and the country’s treasure head, Rachel Reeves, work with the police to sell his Bitcoin Stock Entité (BTC) and plans to create a system to store the crypto to manage the sale, the telegraph reported on Saturday.
Police manage crypto sales in the United Kingdom, but the treasure would be involved while the cryptography market has rallied, strengthening the value of government’s assets.
The total amount of Bitcoin seized by the country is not known, but it contains at least 61,000 bitcoin, worth approximately $ 7.1 billion, seized with a Chinese Ponzi program in 2018 which took place in the United Kingdom.
The idea that the United Kingdom sold its bitcoin was launched earlier this year, with the Daily Mail and the Times reporting in January that Reeves could sell the Bitcoin hiding place to connect the country’s budget.
Cointelegraph contacted HM Treasury to comment.
The victims of Ponzi want the United Kingdom to return Bitcoin
However, the United Kingdom’s plans to sell Bitcoin could be suspended by the victims of a Chinese Ponzi program, which has been looking for the return of Bitcoin since 2024.
“The Bitcoin of the United Kingdom is still legally contested,” Susie Violet Ward, CEO of the Crypto Bitcoin Policy Uk, CEO on Sunday, in an article on X, slamming the report as “sensationalism on the substance”.
“Chinese authorities and victims require it. No sale can occur while this legal process is not resolved,” she added.
The United Kingdom seized Bitcoin in 2018 after the hotel worker Jian Wen tried to whiten the funds of an investment program carried out by electronic technology Tianjin Lantian Gerui while trying to buy a mansion with BTC.
Wen was then accused of three silver laundering chiefs, which she denied, but was found guilty in March of last year and imprisoned for six years and eight months in May 2024.
A group representing the victims of the Ponzi program asked the Chinese Foreign Ministry in April 2024 to negotiate with the United Kingdom to recover Bitcoin.
The United Kingdom wants to continue to grasp Bitcoin
Meanwhile, the crown prosecution service asked the high court to let it keep the bitcoin seized of the program, which could see the funds sold and separate between the police.
Freddie New, Bitcoin Policy Uk’s Head of Policy, posted on Sunday on X that any sale of the crypto would occur under the product of crime laws, which indicates that the assets will be sold “to satisfy the confiscation orders” and will compensate the victims if they were ordered by a court.
“We understand that the victims here lost the Yuan, not Bitcoin. There is an additional wrinkle here in what we also understand that there can be diplomatic efforts in progress to ask for bitcoin rather than the yuan who was originally lost,” he added.
New said that after victims’ costs and recovery, the remaining funds would go to the treasury could be divided between “the organizations involved in the resumption of assets”, as the police.
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In May, the United Kingdom proposed a hint of 40 million British pounds ($ 53.7 million) “storage and crypto production framework to allow the police to store and manage the crypto seizure. He was dismissed earlier this month after the government said he had not received bids that could meet the request.
The United Kingdom again asked to store Bitcoin
New Bitcoin Policy UK wrote to the government in July 2024, urging to modify the law “to give itself more discretion to keep this precious asset”, which, according to him, was ignored.
Jordan Walker, the founder of the Crypto Advocacy Group Collective Bitcoin, wrote an open letter to the urgent government not to sell Bitcoin in the light of the telegraph report.
“The sale of these assets to approach a short-term budget deficit would send a signal concerning,” he said, adding that this could have “long-term consequences for the economic positioning of the United Kingdom”.
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