US government holds USD5B value of Bitcoin
Date
10/17/2023 5:08:46 AM
(MENAFN) According to a US-based news agency's report on Sunday, the U.S. government has emerged as one of the significant holders of cryptocurrency. This status has been achieved through the seizure of approximately 200,000 bitcoins, which are currently valued in the billions of dollars. The report is based on an analysis of public filings conducted by the cryptocurrency firm 21.co.
194,188 bitcoins, valued at USD5.3 billion, are believed to be in hardware wallets under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and other government organizations, according to 21.co, which states that these are “lower-bound estimations of the US government holdings based on publicly available information.”
The analysis conducted by the cryptocurrency company monitored the flow of bitcoins to and from U.S. government accounts linked to the three most substantial cryptocurrency seizures that have occurred since 2020.
A notable illustration is the involvement in the Bitfinex cyber-attack that transpired in January 2022. This operation, which took nearly six years to conclude, led to the Justice Department obtaining 94,643 bitcoins. In a similar vein, 51,326 bitcoins were acquired in the seizure involving James Zhong in March 2022. Furthermore, the government managed to confiscate 69,369 bitcoins as a result of the notorious shutdown of the online drug marketplace Silk Road in November 2020.
It's worth noting that these assets are primarily stored offline in encrypted storage devices, which are safeguarded by the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service.
Periodically, Washington chooses to divest some of the seized bitcoins through auctions based on court-issued liquidation orders. One of the most significant sales took place in 2014 when billionaire Tim Draper acquired 30,000 of these tokens from government auctions.
Nevertheless, in recent years, the government has opted to sell the seized cryptocurrency assets through exchanges. An example of this occurred earlier this year when 9,118 bitcoins were sold on Coinbase, as detailed in a public filing.
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