Australia To Sell Convict's £9m Bitcoin Haul

Nearly 25,000 bitcoins confiscated by Australian police as proceeds of crime are going to be sold at an auction in Sydney, officials have confirmed.

The cryptocurrency stash, worth an estimated £9m, will mostly be sold in lots of 2,000 - and investors from as far afield as Europe and the US have expressed interest in the sealed auction.

Accountancy firm Ernst & Young is overseeing the sale, which begins on 20 June.

This is only the second such bitcoin auction to take place worldwide.

From 2013 to 2015, the US Marshals Service sold 144,000 bitcoins which had been confiscated from Ross Ulbricht, who notoriously founded the online drug marketplace Silk Road.

Those sell-offs helped to reduce volatility in the digital currency's value, and it is believed that rising prices in recent months will also result in greater interest.

Adam Nikitins, a transaction partner at Ernst & Young, said registered bidders will be told who the bitcoins had belonged to.

In late 2013, the Victoria state government in Australia seized about 24,500 bitcoins from Richard Pollard, a drug dealer from Melbourne.

The 32-year-old was sentenced to 11 years behind bars last October after he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking on Ulbricht's Silk Road website.

Part of bitcoin's appeal lies in how people can buy goods and services, and exchange cash, without having to involve credit card companies or banks.

At the beginning of May, the Australian technology entrepreneur Craig Wright claimed he was the elusive inventor of the controversial currency, who has only been known under the false name Satoshi Nakamoto.

As of Tuesday morning, the price of a single bitcoin was £362.91 - a slight drop from the 21-month high of £373.18 reached earlier in the week.