The UK Treasury plans to sell seized Bitcoin worth approximately $7 billion to fill the fiscal gap

According to The Daily Telegraph, the UK Home Office is working with police to sell a batch of seized cryptocurrencies to fill the fiscal gap. The total amount of cryptocurrency seized by the police is currently unclear. But a raid in 2018 seized 61000 bitcoins from a Ponzi scheme case. Last week, the value of Bitcoin reached $123000, making it worth over £ 5.4 billion (approximately $7 billion), a 20 fold increase from when it was seized. The Ministry of the Interior plans to establish a "cryptocurrency storage and monetization framework" that allows law enforcement agencies to securely store frozen digital currencies and sell them. According to the tender announcement released by BlueLight Commercial, a procurement company under the police, on behalf of the Home Office, the UK government will also provide a contract to operate a centralized service responsible for holding and selling seized cryptocurrencies. The contract is worth up to 53.7 million US dollars and is valid for at least four years. But the proposal has not yet received an acceptable bid. The time between the police seizing digital assets and clearing and selling them is usually long. The bidding announcement acknowledges that "the average time between asset seizure and the end of legal proceedings (realization) is within 1 year, and for more complex cases, it may take 3 to 4 years