Summary
- On Tuesday, cryptocurrency wallets identified by Arkham as belonging to the U.S. government transferred approximately $103.2 million.
- Arkham attributes the Bitcoin to funds from the HashFlare fraud case and Bitfinex hack, while the BNB relates to assets seized from Alameda Research.
- No announcement regarding a sale has been made. Arkham estimates U.S. holdings at around 325,000 BTC, outpacing the U.K. at 61,245 BTC and El Salvador at 7,200 BTC.
According to blockchain analytics firm Arkham, U.S. government-controlled wallets executed a transaction involving over $100 million in Bitcoin and BNB on Tuesday.
Some of the transferred assets were sent to Coinbase Prime, which traders often interpret as an indication of a potential sale. However, the specific reason for this transfer and whether a sale is forthcoming remains unverified.
Myriad: Predict Bitcoin's future price.The Bitcoin portion consisted of 833.6 BTC, valued at approximately $71.6 million, which passed through two unmarked addresses before arriving at deposit addresses linked to Coinbase Prime, the platform utilized by Coinbase for institutional crypto trading and storage.
Arkham connects about 568.7 BTC of this total to assets forfeited from Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin. The term "forfeited" indicates that a court has authorized the government to retain assets associated with criminal activity. The two Estonian individuals operated HashFlare, a crypto-mining service that sold mining contracts without the necessary computing resources to fulfill them.
Transfers of Bitcoin from government wallets. Image: ArkhamAccording to prosecutors, HashFlare generated over $577 million in sales from 2015 to 2019. A federal court sentenced both defendants in August 2025 to the time they had already served, which was 16 months. The Justice Department noted that the forfeited assets would be utilized to compensate victims.
The remaining 264.9 BTC originated from the Bitfinex hack. In 2016, hacker Ilya Lichtenstein stole 119,754 BTC from the exchange. In January 2025, the Justice Department recommended that 94,643 BTC be returned to Bitfinex. The government continued to move funds from that wallet throughout the day until it was completely drained.
The BNB component of this $103 million transaction involved the transfer of 40,285 BNB, valued at $31.63 million, to an unmarked address, which subsequently forwarded the full amount to another address. Arkham traces these coins back to funds taken from Alameda Research, the trading firm associated with the now-defunct FTX exchange.
However, a transfer does not equate to a sale. Coinbase Prime also serves as a custodian for the government, essentially acting as a vault service. Thus, a deposit could indicate storage, similar to a previous $288 million transaction in July. Only the government is aware of the specifics, and it has not disclosed further information.
The recent transaction represents just a small portion of the government’s overall holdings. According to Arkham's September analysis, the U.S. government possesses approximately 325,000 BTC, valued at about $27 billion, which accounts for around 1.6% of Bitcoin's total supply. This makes the U.S. the largest government holder of Bitcoin according to Arkham, surpassing the U.K. with 61,245 BTC and El Salvador with 7,200 BTC.
Almost all of the U.K.'s Bitcoin holdings stem from a fraud that affected over 120,000 Chinese pensioners, while El Salvador acquired its Bitcoin through direct purchases and mining.