A few months ago, a man in New Jersey was sentenced to 20 years in prison for selling and transferring bitcoin to someone in China.
In November, a South Carolina man pleaded guilty to embezzlement and conspiracy to embesse in exchange for the sale of $100,000 in bitcoin, which was worth less than $1,000.
In the meantime, bitcoin has exploded in value since the FBI seized bitcoin accounts in January of this year.
The price has climbed from $1.20 to more than $2,000 per bitcoin since then, making it easy for individuals and businesses to buy the digital currency for cash or bitcoin at many of the crypto stores that sell the digital coins.
The following chart compares the Bitcoin price on Bittrex and Coinbase, two cryptocurrency exchanges, with the same amount of bitcoins sold in the same day.
The chart shows that as of Tuesday, the price of bitcoin on Bettrex was $2.5 billion, or roughly 1 percent of the value of all bitcoin sold in all U.S. markets in the first four weeks of 2017.
This compares to a market cap of more than 1 trillion bitcoins, or $3.4 trillion, as of Monday.
Bittrex has already suspended trading of bitcoins for a period of time due to the seizure, but the price has surged to as high as $2 million on Tuesday, according to Bitterex, an online cryptocurrency exchange.
In addition, the value and price of bitcoins are directly linked to the price on the bitcoin exchanges.
Bitcoin is trading for more than 20 times the value in New York at the moment.
In a statement, Coinbase said its decision to suspend trading was not related to the government’s seizure.
Coinbase said it had notified authorities of the seizure but that it had not yet determined the extent of the government action and the potential impact on its customers.
Bettrex did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In California, prosecutors in San Francisco and San Mateo County charged a 39-year-old man with two counts of money laundering after he was caught selling $400,000 of bitcoins to a Hong Kong-based company, which he used to buy $1 million worth of bitcoin.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the charges came after the FBI found evidence of fraud.