Morning Minute | US Government Cleared to Sell $6.5B in Silk Road Bitcoin
TylerD's Market Summary
🤯 DOJ Clears US Government to Sell Silk Road Bitcoin
The final Bitcoin boogeyman just appeared.
The Silk Road Bitcoin is going up for sale.
Ironically, just 11 days before Trump is set to take office and potentially begin his Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
What Happened?
A federal court in California approved the liquidation of 69,370 Bitcoin ($6.5B), marking the conclusion of a four-year legal battle over the crypto tied to the Silk Road dark web marketplace.
Judge Richard Seeborg denied attempts to block the forfeiture, paving the way for one of the largest government crypto sales in history.
While the ruling clears the legal path, this doesn't guarantee the Bitcoin will be immediately sold.
Though there are questions out there if it indeed has already been sold, and how much.
Many are pointing to the $2B moved to Coinbase in December and speculating it has already been sold.
Why It Matters
We have seen governments sell before.
Back in July, the German government sold 50k seized Bitcoin at an average price of $57,600 raising $2.88B (terrible sales in hindsight).
That selling did drag down the price of Bitcoin for a few weeks, but of course, the price has now soared nearly 100% since then.
So the question is - how much of an impact will this US government selling have? And how much (if any) has already been completed?
What jumps out to me is how little Bitcoin has moved since this news broke.
It's down from ~$95k to $93,500. That's a -1.5% move.
For a headline this big, I would've expected more panic selling. Which makes me believe that perhaps it already happened, and this is what drove the sudden dip from $102k on Monday to $94k.
The other key impact/question here is - will this light a fire under Trump to back Bitcoin even more?
This feels like a direct slap in the face to him, who said "Never sell your Bitcoin" back in August. The Bitcoin Strategic Reserve plan was built around first keeping the Silk Road Bitcoin and then maybe buying on the open market.
If the Silk Road Bitcoin is gone, the only choices are to 1) abandon the plan or 2) market buy Bitcoin.
Option 1 would likely hurt prices in the short term. Option 2 would lead to euphoria.
We will soon find out which path he takes. And the federal courts may have just forced his hand...
🚚 What is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
- ETH NFT leaders were red across the board down 3-5%; Punks -5% at 36.3 ETH, Pudgy -5% at 26, BAYC -3% at 15.75 ETH, Azuki -2% at 12.3 ETH
- OCH Genesis (+12%) and Kaito (+12%) led notable top movers
- BTC NFT leaders were mixed; Bitcoin Puppets -2%, NodeMonkes -2%, OMB +3%, Quantum Cats even
- The Runes leaders were mostly red; DOG -2% at $582M mc, PUPS +2% at $77M, BDC -5% at $35M, GIZMO -7% at $10M
- Yuga CEO Garga announced that the first iteration of a "persistent" The Otherside metaverse is coming this June, meaning it will be ongoing and not event-based
- Trump Bitcoin Digital Trading Cards went live on Wednesday for those who purchased 100 of the Mugshot editions, currently at a 0.2 BTC floor
💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker
Here's a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:
- Bubblemaps announced an airdrop coming as a rewards program for their V2 users, with a waitlist available for those interested in signing up
- Berachain announced the 127 projects which quality for their builders program RFA
- Blast teased their mobile launching and tokenomics coming later this month
- Movement Labs is closing a $100M Series B funding round by CoinFund and Nova Fund
🤖 AI x Crypto
New section dedicated to headlines in the AI sector of crypto:
- Overall market cap fell another 8% to $14.1B, with most leaders down 10-15%
- Leaders: VIRTUAL (-5%), ai16z (-19%), FARTCOIN (-16%), FAI (-15%) and AIXBT (-4%)
- Top movers include PIPPIN (+170%), SPERG (+72%), SOLARIS (+32%), YNE (+30%), & SCHIZO (+30%)
- SOLA debuted as a voice-powered Solana AI assistant, soaring to $15M in its first day
- The LLM meme dominated Solana volume with $270M, reaching $120M in its first day
- Virtuals announced its new Multi Agent Asset Management system in partnership with Infinity Ground, as they look to build out a "Society of Agents"
- ai16z partnered with Openserv for agent swarm capabilities
- Story Protocol announced a partnership with Stability AI, using its image models to build AI apps on Story's IP focused blockchain
- Smolworld showcased its first onchain autonomous Eliza-based agents for its game/metaverse
- Seedify launched a presale for a "Mytstery Agent" launching at $1M FDV
🌎 Macro Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
- Crypto majors fell another 1-2% as the dip continues; BTC -1.5% at $93,600, ETH -1% at $3,300, SOL -2% at $191, XRP -2% at $2.31
- NEO (+6%), KAIA (+5%), MKR (+4%) and FLOW (+4%) led alts
- Two new companies added Bitcoin to their balance sheets this week, including Thumzup Medai and KULR, buying $1M and $21M respectively
- Oklahoma Senator Dusty Deevers introduced a bill to legalize Bitcoin payments in the state, across agencies, private companies and individuals
- Terra founder Do Kwon's trial was set for Jan 2026
- Memecoin majors are red this morning mostly down 2-4%; DOGE -4%, SHIBA -1%, PEPE -3%, PENGU -9%, BONK -4%, WIF -12%, MOG -8%
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