As of March 25, 2023, the U.S. government held 205,515 bitcoins worth $5.6 billion, which according to current statistics represents about 1.06% of the total in circulation. The bitcoin cache is the result of three confiscations that began in 2020; on-chain data from Glassnode revealed that on March 9, approximately 9,860 bitcoins worth roughly $269 million were sent to a Coinbase address.
Uncle Sam’s Crypto Stash: How the U.S. Government Became the Top Bitcoin Holder
The U.S. government currently holds 205,515 bitcoins worth $5.66 billion based on today’s exchange rates. This bitcoin was seized in three separate seizures: the Silk Road bitcoin seizure in November 2020, the Bitfinex hack seizure in 2022, and the bitcoin seizure from James Zhong last year. Of these, 69,369BTCwere seized from “Personal X”; 94,643were seized; BTCwere taken from Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan; 51,326were taken from BTCin November 2022 BTCwas seized from Zhong in November 2022.
According to areportfrom Glassnode on March 9, 2023, some of these bitcoins were moved, reducing the total from 215,338 to 205,515BTC. “About [40,000 bitcoins] have moved from wallets associated with U.S. government law enforcement seizures,” Glassnode reported.” Most of these appear to be internal transfers (for now). However, about 9,861 [bitcoins] seized from Silk Road hackers have been sent to our Coinbase cluster.”
The current estimate of 205,515 bitcoins (BTC) comes from a series of Dune Analytics metricsproduced by listed commodity provider 21Shares. This data shows U.S. government addresses and transaction history. Of the caches currently seized,. BTCThis includes 44% of Bitfinex forfeitures, 32.2% of “Personal X” forfeitures, and 23.8% of Zhong forfeitures. Additionally, the U.S. government may hold more Bitcoin than is tabulated in the 21Shares dataset. The summary notes that 205,515BTCis a “lower bound estimate” based solely on “publicly available information.”
The 205,515 bitcoins seized by the U.S. government represents a substantial amount of custody compared to other large holders: less than Grayscale’s 643,572cache, but more than BTCand more than Microstrategy’s BTC, which exceeds the stock of 132,500. Moreover, compared to the whales on thebitcoin-rich address list, it is the second largest (if consolidated), falling behind Binance’s bitcoin cold wallet, which holds 248,597BTC
more bitcoin is held by the federal government than the roughly 140,000BTCin Mt Gox’s cache. This is not the first time the U.S. government has been the top holder; the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was the second largestholder. BTCholder after seizing the original Silk Road marketplace. However, the government’s stash at the time dried up after U.S. marshals held a bitcoin auction to sell the crypto asset in 2014.
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