"But by the time the Swedish Enforcement Authority began auctioning off the crypto, bitcoin had skyrocketed in value — and only three had to be sold to amount to the value that was booked as the dealer’s profit at the time of his arrest."
If the police confiscated everything you owned to cover a fine for $100, isn't it reasonable to get the difference back?
Legally this is correct and exactly what happened.
The reason this is becoming an issue is that all the bitcoins that were seized were from selling drugs. The point of the fine is to match the profit of the crime so reasonably it should have taken all of the bitcoin regardless of the underlying value.
If he had sold drugs for a gold ring and then the price of gold went up, should he have gotten a bit of the ring back?
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/domda-knarklangare-far-mang...
That seems to be an assertion the prosecutor made, but I see no facts to support that statement. Prosecutors say those sorts of things all the time in order to win cases.
Are you saying the prosecutor is correct or that the translation is false?
I think it's more that they're mad because someone managed to make and keep 7 figures profit from a crime that they were caught doing purely because the justice system screwed up.
It's hard to keep the "crime doesn't pay" messaging when stuff like that happens.