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US Government Holds Over $6 Billion Worth of Bitcoin in Custody from Three Seizures

Cointime Official

May 6 (Cointime) - The US Government is currently holding over $6 billion worth of Bitcoin in custody, according to a recent tweet by @ArkhamIntel.

The government's holdings consist of Bitcoin seized from three different events. The first seizure took place in 2020 from the Silk Road, which resulted in the government gaining custody of 69.37K BTC. In 2022, the government seized 94.64K BTC from the Bitfinex Hack and 51.326K BTC from Bitcoin thief James Zhong. 

Read the full thread:

Silk Road BTC was seized in late 2020 from a hacker known as Individual X, who had stolen it from the Silk Road marketplace in from 2012 to 2013.

The BTC is currently held in custody by the FBI.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/united-states-files-civil-action-forfeit-cryptocurrency-valued-over-one-billion-us

The BTC from Silk Road is held in a single wallet:

bc1qa5wkgaew2dkv56kfvj49j0av5nml45x9ek9hz6

This wallet holds 69,369 BTC, worth just over $2B at current prices.

In 2016, the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex was hacked for over 100K BTC.

This was traced by US officials to over 2000 BTC addresses owned by Ilya Lichtenstein, a Russian-US national from New York.

US Law enforcement seized over 94K BTC from Lichtenstein in Jan 2022.

Bitfinex BTC seized by the FBI is held in the following wallet:

bc1qazcm763858nkj2dj986etajv6wquslv8uxwczt

This wallet holds 94,643 BTC, worth over $2.7B at current prices.

James Zhong, another individual who hacked Silk Road, was investigated in 2021-2022, with over 50K BTC surrendered to the US Department of Justice (DoJ).

4 different wallets currently hold a total of 51,326 BTC, seized from James Zhong in 2022.

These wallets are:

30.175K BTC bc1qf2yvj48mzkj7uf8lc2a9sa7w983qe256l5c8fs

9K BTC bc1qe7nk2nlnjewghgw4sgm0r89zkjzsurda7z4rdg

1.5K BTC bc1qzd8c8h8dcgwuy5zdafdzdce2ap0nayf8v3xrez

825 BTC bc1qmxjefnuy06v345v6vhwpwt05dztztmx4g3y7wp

The US Gov. still holds 41.5K BTC in these wallets.

The US Government declared its intention to sell this BTC in batches over the year 2023, with 9.861K BTC already sent to Coinbase for liquidation.

Despite claiming to sell the Bitcoin on March 14th, the execution price was significantly lower than the spot price of that day.

On 7th March 2023, the US Government sent 9.861K BTC to Coinbase in three transactions, in order to liquidate it for USD.

This seems to be a settlement transaction with a trading partner - the US Gov. appears to have sold BTC by TWAP (Time Weighted Average Price) over Q1 2023.

  This Arkham entity contains a complete list of US Government wallets, and all holdings from the prior three seizures in this thread. Follow this link, and hit 'clone entity' to import it into your personal instance of Arkham: https://platform.arkhamintelligence.com/explorer/entity/7ff7bdb4-7414-45a5-a5ec-dd3f1a173c32

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