British authorities became the first in the country to seize and exchange bitcoins discovered during a criminal investigation.
Police force obtained 295 bitcoins last October after arresting a Latvian man called Seregjs Teresko, who has since been convicted for money laundering and sentenced to nine years in prison.
Police sold the assets for around $1.5 million following a court hearing at the time. Back then, the price of a bitcoin was around $5,000 but shot up to its all-time high of around $20,000 just two months later.
The news comes as a time when law enforcement agencies in the U.K. are beefing up their knowledge about cryptocurrency in an effort to better investigate crimes that involve the technology.
Last year, a research office backed by a group of U.K. law enforcement groups proposed changing the country’s laws to make seizing bitcoin easier. The N8 Policing Research Partnership said at the time it aimed to increase institutional knowledge about cryptocurrency among British police officials via a broad training initiative.
