The US government has begun to sell off 41,491 Bitcoin (BTC) that were seized as part of a case connected to the creator of the Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht. A court filing in March stated that officials sold around 9,861 BTC for over 215 million USD on March 14, with the remainder expected to be liquidated in four more batches over the course of the year.

After the announcement that the US government plans to sell over 41,000 Bitcoins and with the Mt. Gox repayments also scheduled to be distributed this year, traders and market players in the crypto industry are worried. Their concern was amplified when it was discovered that US authorities had transferred more than 200 million USD worth of Bitcoin to Coinbase recently, which is expected to add to the mounting sell pressure for the top cryptocurrency.

The filing also indicated that the second round of liquidation would not take place before the sentencing of James Zhong, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges related to stealing BTC from the Silk Road in 2012. The government seized over 50,000 BTC, worth more than 3 billion USD at the time, from Zhong's Georgia home in November 2021.

After a decade of its shutdown, Silk Road, which was initially created for the trading of illegal products, such as weapons and stolen credit card information, caught the eye of the US law enforcement officials leading to the apprehension of Ross Ulbricht in 2013. He is now serving a life sentence without parole. 

Sources:

https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/us-government-plans-to-sell-41k-bitcoin-connected-to-silk-road-3047016

https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-government-plans-to-sell-41k-bitcoin-connected-to-silk-road

https://coingape.com/us-govt-dumps-bitcoin-connected-to-silk-road/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonkochkodin/2023/03/31/us-government-sells-bitcoin-seized-from-silk-road-case-netting-over-215-million/?sh=310cae632888