How the German Judiciary Sells Confiscated Cryptocurrency

Lecture at the 139th Netzpolitischen Abend of the Digitalen Gesellschaft

Tuesday, 3 September 2024, 8 pm
c-base, Rungestraße 20
10179 Berlin

Never before have so many crypto assets been seized in Germany. In 2023, the German police confiscated a record 44 million euros in Bitcoin in one fell swoop. The background to this was an investigation into the operators of ChipMixer for money laundering. The next record followed just one year later: in January 2024, bitcoins worth billions were seized in Saxony during investigations into movie2k.to. Germany was briefly considered one of the largest Bitcoin holders in the world. This poses new challenges for the authorities: Safekeeping, selling, auctioning – and if so, when?

Marie Bröckling is a freelance data journalist from Berlin. As Mercator Journalist in Residence at ZEVEDI in April, she focussed on the question of how the justice system is dealing with the growing amount of confiscated cryptocurrency. She regularly reports on security policy, technology and China for German and international media. She also works as a producer for NBC News. Most recently, she lived in Hong Kong for two years, where she researched pro-China influencers. She was recently honoured by Medium magazine as one of the ‘Top 30 under 30’ journalists in Germany.

The lecture is also available to stream (in German only).