Finland government recently released a new set of guidelines on how law enforcement officials should handle the confiscated cryptocurrencies. According to these new guidelines, the official agencies that control the cryptocurrency storage will not be able to place the funds on exchanges and will have to instead keep them inaccessible from the internet, offline.
Thus, the ruling indicates that the agencies involved in this process of controlling the confiscated cryptocurrencies will have to come up with some form of cold storage solution so that they can maintain a wallet without any active web connection. However, the Helsinki customs office could not confirm how the cryptocurrencies are being stored until now.
Authorities Having Problem Storing Confiscated Bitcoins in 2016
According to a report, the authorities of Finland are currently holding approximately 2000 BTC that were confiscated in multiple raids since 2016. The data was recently revealed by the customs office. As per today’s pricing, the worth of the confiscated 2000 bitcoins is around $23 million. As previously reported, the customs in the country seized BTC and other items of €1 value at a time in connection with the online dark market, Valhalla operation.
But now the authorities are finding it difficult to store the confiscated BTC and are trying to come up with a solution to store 2,000 bitcoins following the issuance of new guidelines from the Treasury. The new guidelines from the Treasury prohibit the authorities form storing the bitcoin stash of around $22.8 million on virtual currency services or exchanges.
According to sources, the previously existing norms on the confiscated cryptocurrency were insufficient to properly deal with the problem. With this new set of guidelines, the Finland government has made it clear that it does not consider bitcoin or any other type of crypto asset as currency. Rather the rules indicate that crypto is an asset that as a rule cannot be used or accepted as a mode of payment or investment.
The seized crypto assets are expected to be converted into Euros by the Finnish state at public auctions following a binding court ruling on the 2000 confiscated bitcoins.
