In June, the U.S. government casually auctioned off some spare litecoin, bitcoin and bitcoin cash.

Lot 4TQSCI21402001 — one of 11 on offer over the four-day auction — included 150.22567153 litecoin and 0.00022893 bitcoin cash, worth more than $21,000 at today’s prices. The crypto property had been confiscated as part of a tax noncompliance case.

This kind of sale is nothing new for Uncle Sam. For years, the government has been seizing, stockpiling and selling off cryptocurrencies, alongside the usual assets one would expect from high-profile criminal sting operations.

“It could be 10 boats, 12 cars, and then one of the lots is X number of bitcoin being auctioned,” explained Jarod Koopman, director of the IRS’ cybercrime unit.

Koopman’s team of IRS agents don’t fit the stereotypical mold. They are sworn law enforcement officers who carry weapons and badges and who execute search, arrest and seizure warrants. They also bring back record amounts of cryptocash.

“In fiscal year 2019, we had about $700,000 worth of crypto seizures. In 2020, it was up to $137 million. And so far in 2021, we’re at $1.2 billion,” Koopman told CNBC. The fiscal year ends Sept. 30…read more.

Eric Adams, who has outstripped the better-known crypto advocate Andrew Yang in New York City’s mayoral race, has made his own Bitcoin pledge as he retains his first-place lead.

Within the same month, talk of the United States’ budding capital of crypto has seemingly shifted its center from Miami to New York City. June opened with feverish excitement about the largest Bitcoin (BTC) event in history being hosted in Miami, and the city’s mayor, Francis Suarez, has taken a series of steps to strengthen his bid to make Miami the top spot for crypto not just nationally but globally.

Yet with U.S. pundits now focused on New York City’s mayoral race, the current frontrunner for the Democratic nominee, Eric Adams, has — at least momentarily — stolen the limelight from Suarez and his plans. On election night on Tuesday, soon after voting had closed for the primaries, Adams pledged:

“I’m going to promise you: In one year — one year — you’re going to see a different city. […] We’re going to become the center of life science, the center of cybersecurity, the center of self-driving cars, drones, the center of Bitcoins. We’re going to be the center of all the technology.”
In a city known for its overwhelmingly Democrat-leaning voting record, successful candidacy as Democratic nominee is viewed by most commentators as a surefire route to becoming the city’s actual mayor once elections are held in November later this year. Click to read full article.

June 21 (Reuters) – A rare pear-shaped diamond that is expected to fetch up to $15 million can be bought at auction next month using cryptocurrencies, Sotheby’s announced on Monday.

Sotheby’s said it would be first time a diamond of such size has been offered for public purchase with cryptocurrency. No other physical object of such high value has previously been available for sale with cryptocurrency, the auction house added.

The 101.38-carat pear shaped flawless diamond, dubbed The Key 10138, is one of just ten diamonds of more than 100 carats ever to come to auction, only two of which were pear-shaped.

It carries a pre-sale estimate of $10 million – $15 million and will be sold on July 9 in Hong Kong. Bitcoin or ether, along with traditional money, will be accepted as payment.

“This is a truly symbolic moment. The most ancient and emblematic denominator of value can now, for the first time, be purchased using humanity’s newest universal currency,” Patti Wong, chairman of Sotheby’s Asia, said in a statement.

Cryptocurrencies have had a volatile year, with explosive growth and major tumbles. In the United States, the National Republican Congressional Committee last week said it will accept donations in cryptocurrency; El Salvador this month became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.

Sotheby’s in May sold a Banksy for $12.9 million in the first instance of a work of physical art sold by a major auction house that was bought with cryptocurrency.

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On June 5, at a conference in Miami, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced that the Central American country is in the process of adopting bitcoin as legal tender: a move that would make El Salvador the first country to deem bitcoin an official national currency. Despite El Salvador’s small size, Bukele’s effort is a major milestone in monetary policy history, one with significant ramifications for the global financial system.

‘Potentially helping billions around the world’

At the Bitcoin 2021 conference, Bukele described his legislative proposal as a way to “design a country for the future.” On Twitter, he pointed out that if 1 percent of the world’s bitcoin moved to El Salvador, it would amount to a quarter of the country’s annual economic output.

And Bukele is not engaging in wishful thinking. Each year, Salvadoran emigrants send $6 billion home in remittances, from places like the United States. Today, those remittances must travel through middlemen who take cuts as large as 20 percent. “By using bitcoin,” tweeted Bukele, “the amount received by more than a million low income families will increase in the equivalent of billions of dollars every year.”

70 percent of Salvadorans lack bank accounts, Bukele noted. Because people can transmit bitcoin to relatives and businesses on their smartphones, without the need for a bank account, the move to make Bitcoin legal tender could help achieve the “moral imperative” of financial inclusion, and provide “a space where some of the leading innovators can reimagine the future of finance, potentially helping billions around the world.”

The political party Bukele founded, Nuevas Ideas, controls 56 seats out of 84 in El Salvador’s legislative assembly, the Asamblea Legislativa, making it likely that Bukele’s bitcoin initiative is enacted into law.

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