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The world's first crypto auction: Asset Reality's origin story

Author
Lo Furneaux
Digital Content & Operations Coordinator

Did you know that a key part of Asset Reality’s origin story took place exactly 5 years ago today?

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History was being made as the world’s first live auction of seized Bitcoin was conducted by Wilsons Auctions on behalf of the Belgian Government. At the time of the auction, BTC was valued at nearly £3k per coin, attracting more than 7,500 bids from cryptocurrency enthusiasts worldwide.

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Congratulations to the team at Wilsons Auctions on their remarkable accomplishment. Photo Credit: Wilsons Auctions

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This event is a significant milestone for Asset Reality as it marks the first time our co-founders Aidan Larkin and Nick Furneaux ever stood in the same room together!

Nick led a pre-auction briefing for local law enforcement officials on the essentials of cryptocurrency before Aidan, then the Head of Asset Recovery at Wilsons Auctions, successfully auctioned the portfolio of digital assets for more than £240,000, earning himself the novel title of the world's first cryptocurrency auctioneer in the process.

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Asset Reality co-founder Nick Furneaux (L) and Aidan Larkin (R) at the world's first cryptocurrency auction. Photo Credit: Belfast Telegraph

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That milestone took them both on a literal journey around the world sharing their experiences of dealing with seized complex assets and planted the seed for what was to become Asset Reality. 

One year later, the company was founded from a spare bedroom in Aidan's house. When asked why this event inspired him, Aidan explained:

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“Despite having dealt with a range of fascinating assets during my time at Wilsons Auctions, it was undeniably the crypto cases that opened my eyes to the lack of resources and understanding of how governments could deal with this emerging problem (seizing crypto) and highlighted the legacy issues in non-digital asset management. Enforcement agencies, prosecutors, courts, and virtually everyone in the sector, relied on spreadsheets and legacy IT systems that meant increased risk, thousands of wasted hours in manual reconciliation and no plan for the inevitable challenges that lay ahead in managing seized crypto.” 

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“Conversely, the blockchain presented an opportunity to manage, govern and deal with seized assets in innovative ways that would save time and reduce risk - it was too exciting and intriguing to walk away from and I eventually approached Nick and our other co-founder Hugo Elliott about building a company that would tackle these issues head-on and here we are 3 years later doing exactly that.” 

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Our seized asset management platform has undergone significant investment and development since then to streamline the asset recovery and forfeiture lifecycle by making seized asset management simpler, more effective and more impactful from recovery to sale.

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Book a demo now if you'd like to gain exclusive access to Asset Reality's seized asset management platform.

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