Feds seek help managing and disposing seized digital currency

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The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) is searching for a contractor who can manage the digital assets the federal agency seizes from criminal suspects.

A posting on the U.S. government’s SAM database notes that the successful candidate must be able to “provide the full range of virtual currency management and disposal services. This includes but is not limited to such activities as accounting, customer management, audit compliance, managing blockchain forks, wallet creation and management, private encryption key generation and safekeeping, backup and recovery of private encryption key material, airdrops, etc., as well as future actions associated with the virtual currency forfeiture process.”

Getting the most out of their coins and tokens

The U.S. Marshals is offering this contract so that they can get the most out of the coins and tokens that they seize from criminals while keeping their digital assets as secure as possible. To accomplish this, they are looking for an individual or company that has a better understanding of the digital asset market, as well as its accounting and auditing compliance procedures, than they do. 

Some coins experience hard forks that entitle their holders to an equal amount of coins from the newly forked chain. In addition, holding some coins and tokens entitles the holder to receive more tokens via airdrops—an event where free coins and tokens are sent to wallet addresses. 

According to the U.S. Marshals’ posting, they are looking for an entity who is better suited to manage digital assets and events like hard forks and airdrops so that they can get the most out of the digital coins and tokens that they seize—while complying with existing accounting and compliance frameworks that pertain to digital assets.

The U.S. Marshals may begin hosting auctions for coins created from hard forks in the future. In the past, the federal law enforcement agency has held auctions for BTC that they seized from criminals. But by the looks of their updated contract offer, we may be seeing the agency auction off BCH and Bitcoin SV (BSV) that come from BTC holders that forfeited their BTC to the U.S. Marshals before collecting the BCH and BSV they own from hard forks.

If you are an individual or company that is interested in the contract the U.S. Marshal is offering, you can find all of the details needed to apply here.