A US district judge has announced that $28m worth of Bitcoins, seized by the Fed following the raid on notorious online drug market place Silk Road, will be auctioned off.

The decision on the forfeiture of 30,000 Bitcoins seized from a Silk Road server has been reached because the coins were used to facilitate money laundering, according to the US authorities.

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Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said: "With today’s forfeiture of $28 million worth of Bitcoins from the Silk Road website, a global cyber business designed to broker criminal transactions, we continue our efforts to take the profit out of crime and signal to those who would turn to the dark web for illicit activity that they have chosen the wrong path."

Bharana clarifies that the reason for the liquidation of the assets is die to the nature of use, not the Bitcoins themselves.

"These bitcoins were forfeited not because they are Bitcoins, but because they were, as the court found, the proceeds of crimes."

This means the US Attorney’s office is now free to get rid of the Bitcoin stash, currently worth about $28 million, at Bitcoin’s current value of $900.

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The Bitcoins due to be liquidated are just part of the entire stash of Bitcoins seized by the FBI in relation to Silk Road.

The complete haul of 144,336 Bitcoins seized from the computers belonging to alleged Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht are currently tied up in lawsuit by Ulbricht against the US government in an attempt to get the coins returned.

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