A federal judge in Chicago sentenced Raheim Hamilton to 40 years in prison and a $5 million fine on Monday, October 5, 2026. Hamilton co-founded the darknet marketplace Empire Market and ran it from 2018 to 2020. Part of his agreement with prosecutors: he hands over around 1,230 bitcoin, 24.4 ether and three properties in Virginia. So says the statement from the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois of October 7. His co-founder Thomas Pavey has agreed to hand over around 1,584 bitcoin, with his sentence due later in October.
Together that comes to 2,814 bitcoin, worth around $234 million or 209 million euros at Sunday morning’s price. The more interesting question is what the state does with them rather than how much they are worth. The United States now collects seized bitcoin instead of selling it. Saxony did the opposite in 2024, and the money is still sitting in an account.
Empire Market: $430 million of turnover in cryptocurrency
Empire Market was one of the largest darknet marketplaces until it was taken down in 2020. According to prosecutors, more than four million deals worth over $430 million ran through the site, with drugs accounting for the bulk at just under $375 million. Payment was exclusively in cryptocurrencies, and the operators advised their customers to obscure payments through mixers. Investigators had already secured crypto assets worth $75 million during the inquiry, BleepingComputer reports.
Will the bitcoin end up in Trump’s bitcoin reserve?
The basis is an executive order issued by President Donald Trump on March 6, 2025. It created a strategic bitcoin reserve to be stocked with all Treasury bitcoin finally forfeited in criminal or civil proceedings. Bitcoin in that reserve may not be sold. The order names exceptions explicitly, among them the return of funds to identifiable victims of crime and a court order.
A drugs marketplace leaves hardly any victims who would have to be repaid. Much therefore suggests that the coins end up in the reserve. Whether and when that happens has not been announced by the authorities. It requires the forfeiture to be final, and Pavey has yet to be sentenced.
How closely the market watches state holdings was on show this week. Wallets attributed to the government moved 17,733 bitcoin to accounts at Coinbase Prime, and talk of sales followed at once. No sale has been documented to date. Congress is also sitting on a bill that would make state bitcoin unsellable for at least 20 years. It has not been passed.
Saxony sold 49,858 bitcoin in an emergency disposal
Germany went the other way. In the case surrounding the illegal streaming site movie2k, a defendant transferred around 49,858 bitcoin to investigators in January 2024. The Dresden public prosecutor general sold them between June 19 and July 12, 2024 through the Frankfurt bank Bankhaus Scheich, raising 2,639,683,413.92 euros, as set out in its statement of July 16, 2024.
The legal basis was the emergency disposal under section 111p of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Where seized assets face a loss in value of around ten percent or more, they have to be sold before judgment. With bitcoin, the authority considered that condition met at any time because of the price swings. The price on the day of sale plays no part in that decision, it stressed.
In hindsight the sale was expensive. Saxony achieved around 52,944 euros per bitcoin on average. A bitcoin costs around 74,127 euros today, so the same coins would be worth some 3.70 billion euros, a good billion euros more than the proceeds. The sum works the other way round too: had the price fallen, the authority would have speculated with someone else’s assets. Preventing exactly that is the point of the emergency disposal.
Who the 2.64 billion euros from the movie2k case belong to
The money does not flow into the state budget. It is secured only provisionally for the criminal proceedings, and the Leipzig regional court decides on forfeiture, with the trial of the alleged main operator having opened there in February 2026. Injured parties would rank ahead of the state, above all the rights holders of the films. The prosecutor general’s most recent statement on the complex, dated June 29, 2026, concerns a side case: a Berlin estate agent has to pay around 2.5 million euros in compensation. No final decision on the billions is reported there.
Seized bitcoin: what the difference means for holders
What counts for the price is how much state-held supply can still reach the market. The United States settled the question with its 2025 order: forfeited bitcoin is to stay where it is as a matter of principle. Every case like Empire Market therefore shrinks the supply that might one day be sold, rather than adding to it. Germany has no comparable rule. The Code of Criminal Procedure still governs here, and for bitcoin it generally demands a quick sale.
There are two takeaways in this if you hold bitcoin. Reports of state wallets on the move are not a sale in themselves, and a look at the legal position of the state in question says more than the movement does. And long-term holders should know that a large part of the state-held supply in the United States is tied up for the foreseeable future, while emergency sales of the Saxon kind remain possible at any time. Vetted venues for buying are set out in the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
(As of October 11, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)
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