Supreme Court Rejects Battle Born’s Bitcoin Case
The US Supreme Court has refused to hear a case concerning the ownership of 69,370 Bitcoin seized by the government from the infamous dark web platform Silk Road. The decision ends Battle Born Investments’ effort to claim the rights to the Bitcoin haul, now worth around $4.38 billion.
Battle Born argued that it acquired the rights to the BTC through a bankruptcy claim linked to the Silk Road shutdown in 2013. However, in both lower courts, including a district court in 2022 and an appellate court in 2023, the appellate court ruled that Battle Born did not have a legitimate claim to the seized Bitcoin.
Now, the Supreme Court has declined to review the decision. The government’s seizure of the BTC was part of a broader crackdown on Silk Road, a platform notorious for facilitating illegal activities such as drug trafficking and money laundering.
Silk Road, created in 2011 by Ross Ulbricht, allowed users to buy and sell illicit goods anonymously using cryptocurrency. Ulbricht was arrested in 2013 and is currently serving a life sentence for his role in running the marketplace.
US Government to Sell Seized BTC
Following its latest victory, the US government can proceed with the sale of BTC, which could significantly impact the cryptocurrency market. Governments’ past sales of large amounts of BTC have caused notable market fluctuations.
For example, when the German government sold nearly 50,000 BTC earlier this year, the market experienced heightened volatility. The US government has already moved a portion of the seized Bitcoin.
In July, $2 billion worth of Silk Road-related BTC was transferred to the US Marshals Service, which uses Coinbase Prime to store and manage seized digital assets. The question of what to do with the Silk Road Bitcoin has also become a topic of political interest.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has stated that, if elected, he would create a “strategic Bitcoin stockpile” as part of his campaign’s economic strategy. Trump has also pledged to release Ross Ulbricht from prison, arguing that his life sentence was too harsh.
Meanwhile, Democrat candidate Kamala Harris has not publicly stated her plans for the seized cryptocurrency. The Supreme Court only accepts a small number of cases each year, and its decision not to hear this one clears the way for the US government’s civil forfeiture action to proceed without further legal challenges.
Residents in Texas Complain About Noise from Bitcoin Mine
Meanwhile, residents in Granbury, Texas, are raising concerns over noise pollution from a Bitcoin mining facility operated by Marathon Digital Holdings. The Bitcoin mine, located next to the Wolf Hollow II gas-fired power plant, was initially built by Compute North Holdings in April 2022.
Since then, the ownership has changed hands multiple times, with Marathon taking control in January 2023. Some locals claimed they heard persistent noise from the mining operations around the spring of 2023.
The mine has become a source of irritation for those living nearby, though there is no clear indication of how many rigs are currently used on-site. However, the mine boasts a significant hashrate of 4.3 ExaHashs per second (EH/s), indicating substantial mining activity.
Marathon Digital is one of the largest Bitcoin mining companies, with 250,000 mining rigs. While it remains unclear how many of these machines operate at the Granbury location, the scale of their overall operations makes it a significant player in the Bitcoin mining space.
Not The First
Granbury residents are not the first to face such an issue. In a similar case from 2022, residents of Hadsel, a Norwegian municipality, successfully pushed to shut down a local Bitcoin mining operation due to noise disturbances.
Though they achieved the shutdown, their action led to increased electricity bills after the loss of revenue from the mining site, which affected the income of the local power company. Granbury’s situation has yet to reach the same conclusion as Hadsel’s, but tensions between the Bitcoin mining facility and residents are escalating.
Despite the residents’ groans, Marathon has continued its operations at the site.
