US Government Moves $103 Million in Seized Bitcoin and BNB, But Hasn’t Said Why

Cryptocurrency wallets controlled by the U.S. government moved more than $100 million in Bitcoin and BNB on Tuesday, according to data from blockchain analytics firm Arkham.

Some of it landed at Coinbase Prime, which market observers typically interpret as being deposited for sale. But the reason for the move, or if any sale is planned, is currently not confirmed.

The Bitcoin part of the stash amounted to 833.6 BTC, worth about $71.6 million. It hopped through two unlabeled addresses before reaching deposit addresses Arkham tags as Coinbase Prime, the service Coinbase runs to trade and store crypto for big institutions.

Arkham ties about 568.7 BTC of that to forfeited funds from Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin. “Forfeited” means a court has signed off on the government keeping assets tied to a crime. The two Estonians ran HashFlare, a crypto-mining service that sold mining contracts without the computing power to back them.

Prosecutors say HashFlare took in more than $577 million in sales between 2015 and 2019. A federal court sentenced both men in August 2025 to the 16 months they had already served. The Justice Department said forfeited assets would be available to repay victims.

The other 264.9 BTC came from the Bitfinex hack. In 2016, hacker Ilya Lichtenstein stole 119,754 BTC from the exchange. In January 2025, the Justice Department argued that 94,643 BTC should go back to Bitfinex. The government kept moving funds from that wallet throughout the day until it was fully drained.

The rest of that $103 million in crypto was BNB, the token of the Binance exchange. The government moved 40,285 BNB, worth $31.63 million, to an unlabeled address, which later passed the full amount to another one. Arkham traces the coins to funds seized from Alameda Research, the trading firm tied to the collapsed FTX exchange.

A transfer, though, is not a sale. Coinbase Prime also acts as the government’s custodian—basically a vault service—so a deposit can mean storage, as in a similar $288 million move in July. Only the government knows which one this is, and it hasn’t said.

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The U.S. government has sold plenty of seized Bitcoin before, but it’s been a while. When it sent 19,800 BTC from the Silk Road haul to Coinbase in December 2024, worth about $1.92 billion, Bitcoin slid more than 2% within 24 hours. Silk Road was an online black market the government shut down.

Bitcoin’s price runs on supply and demand, and a government unloading a big pile at once can push it down for every holder. That is why traders watch these wallets.

But when it comes to crypto sales at the moment, the government’s hands are partly tied. A March 2025 executive order created a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, a stash of forfeited Bitcoin that “shall not be sold.” Bitcoin counts only once it is finally forfeited, so coins tied to open criminal cases sit outside it.

BNB isn’t Bitcoin, so it falls under a separate Digital Asset Stockpile. Treasury can release those assets only for things like repaying crime victims, law enforcement operations, or legal requirements. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said forfeited Bitcoin is the foundation of the reserve.

Tuesday’s coins are a sliver of the government’s total pile. Arkham’s September research puts U.S. government holdings at about 325,000 BTC, worth roughly $27 billion, or about 1.6% of Bitcoin’s supply. That makes Washington the largest government holder in Arkham’s ranking, ahead of the U.K. at 61,245 BTC and El Salvador at 7,200 BTC.

Almost all of the U.K.’s stash came from a fraud that hit more than 120,000 Chinese pensioners, while El Salvador got its Bitcoin through direct purchases and mining.