German law enforcement authorities arrested members of the criminal group and searched their apartment in June 2017. Almost immediately after their arrest, the criminals agreed to reveal their private keys and provide access to wallets that contained 1,312 Bitcoin coins and 220 Ether coins and other cryptocurrencies.
The government sold cryptocurrency in late November - early December. Since 1,312 Bitcoin coins were confiscated before July, the government was able to profit handsomely from both the Bitcoin Cash hard fork in July and the Bitcoin Gold hard fork in October, obtaining 1,312 Bitcoin Gold and 1,312 Bitcoin Cash in the process.
In June, 1,312 Bitcoin coins and 220 Ether coins were worth $3.6 million, as Bitcoin and Ether were valued at $2,700 and $220 respectively. By November, due to the rise in the price of both Bitcoin and Ether, as well as the Bitcoin Cash hard fork and the Bitcoin Gold hard fork, the total value of the confiscated digital assets was $14 million. Within six months, the confiscated digital assets of criminals quadrupled.
The timing of the sale of such assets by German authorities also turned out to be very fortunate, since the price of cryptocurrency began to fall sharply starting in January 2018, and over the past five months, the cryptocurrency market has lost almost 70 percent of its value.
Benjamin Krause, a German prosecutor, noted that the government was lucky in convincing criminals to reveal information about private keys and provide access to wallets because without these keys the funds would not be available.
According to themerkle
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