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It sounds like in Sweden you can only strip the value of asset (value in Swedish Krona, I imagine) related to the crime directly not the asset class itself. A

It sounds like in Sweden you can only strip the value of asset (value in Swedish Krona, I imagine) related to the crime directly not the asset class itself. A guess at why it's like that would be - people flow value of drugs/illicit goods, rarely holding the value for long. This means the prosecutor wants to set an amount for "all drug deals they can convict for" and then try to seize that value. Clearly before crypto the only thing that would wildly fluctuate vs the country's currency is stocks. No one's doing drug deals in stocks so the law was written in value. If they did seize things like stocks it's clear they had a process to sell the liquid asset (they tried to sell the BTC), but they couldn't get their ducks in order to sell it, haha. I'm sure there's going to be a change to the law to seize the asset as a whole instead of pegging it to some particular value.

glenngillen 5y ago
I guess the flip side to this has historically played in the favour of the authorities. Ill-gotten gains would be laundered through a casino where you’d turn it all over over the course of several hours playing a game with a low house edge. You’d lose a bit to the house, but now have some potential legitimacy to how you have the funds. I assume under this approach the authorities would have claimed the full amount you started with and not what you were now left with. Crypto just happens to have been a casino where people have been winning.
yxhuvud 5y ago
They can do either, but they have to actually decide what they do. In this partivular case their was no established best practise of how to do, and the choice that was made backfired. They will alter their behaviour.