Kronofogden, the Swedish supervisory authority, the government agency responsible for tax collection, seizure and eviction in Sweden, has auctioned 4.59 bitcoins.
The auction will be held today, as explained by Johannes Paulson, a business developer at Kronofogden.
“Property is found not only in the garage or in the living room, but also on the Internet. Nowadays we are looking for assets within computers and hard drives as well as on telephones and web services”.
In fact, the news is not only about the fact that bitcoin is being auctioned in Sweden, but also about the fact that it is a seizable asset if a person is in debt. And it’s not the first time it’s happened either: Kronofogden, in fact, has already seized and sold BTC at an auction two years ago.
Unfortunately, Kronofogden, in its press release of today, still describes bitcoin as an anonymous currency that is useful only for tax evasion and illegal activities.
“The fact that the currency can be used for anonymous purchases has made it attractive for criminal activities such as money laundering, tax evasion and for financing other illegal activities. Monitoring bitcoin is, therefore, an important piece of the puzzle in the process of stopping and countering organised crime”.
So why auction off bitcoin if it is considered dangerous and practically an illegal currency?
“Many people ask us why we’re auctioning off the currency and not converting it ourselves. The answer is that there is no infrastructure which meets our needs. We need to do it in a quality-assured way, in order to be sure that the money won’t disappear on the way”, explained Paulson.
Sweden is certainly not among the most famous countries when it comes to cryptocurrencies, although some time ago there was the rumour of a possible creation of e-krona in order to completely remove the use of cash.