It is customary for government officials around the world to profess their disdain for crypto on the grounds that it is widely used to facilitate crime and finance terrorism. Although (government-backed) cash still remains criminals’ preferred financial tool by a wide margin, it is true that nefarious actors also turn to digital assets. When corrupt plans go sideways, law enforcement and other government agents can find themselves in possession of hefty sums of crypto.
It appears that reports of such instances are becoming more common as crypto adoption widens. In August alone, the United States Department of Justice announced the “largest-ever seizure of terrorist organizations’ cryptocurrency accounts” and a Tokyo court ordered Japan’s first-ever seizure of digital assets in a precedent-setting ruling. How do officials go about confiscating crypto, and what implications do their actions have for the contentious relationship between government institutions and the world of decentralized finance?
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