In Brief:
- The NRW judiciary began auctioning confiscated bitcoins from drug trafficking.
- The first auction was started by NRW Minister of Justice Peter Biesenbach.
- The NRW Justice also made its auction portal available to other federal states.
The German state North Rhine-Westphalian (NRW) Judiciary has started auctioning Bitcoin Seized from drug trafficking.
According to the prospectors reported in Cologne, the total of 215 Bitcoins mainly comes from drug trafficking on the Darknet. NRW Minister of Justice Peter Biesenbach (CDU) started the first auction.
The auction started at noon, and the first interested parties rapidly got in. On the 2nd day of online auctions, the first tranches were already above the current market price of the digital currency, which was just under 54k euros per BTC on Monday afternoon.
The NRW Justice wants to offer a total of 215 BTC with a current value of over 11 million euros on its own auction portal. The proceeds go to the state treasury. Additionally, the NRW Justice also makes its auction portal available to other federal states.
The prosecutors could only speculate about why bids are being made over the market value: “Maybe because they know that they will get the goods from us,” said a judge spokeswoman.
Recently, Korea Customs Service confiscated 800 billion won in illegal remittances for crypto transactions. Soon after the covid19 situation eased this year, the illegal currency exchange reached new highs amounting to $1.2 trillion won.
