Wallets linked to the US government moved 833.6 BTC and 40,285 BNB on Oct. 6 Eastern Time, according to addresses tagged by blockchain analytics platform Arkham. The two transfers were worth about $103 million in total.
The Bitcoin ultimately reached a deposit address that Arkham labels as Coinbase Prime. There is still no official statement confirming that the coins were sold.
833.6 BTC traced to two seizure cases
Onchain Lens and Lookonchain said the Bitcoin was worth about $71.56 million at the time of the transfer. Based on Arkham’s labels, 568.7 BTC came from assets seized in the Potapenko and Turogin case, while 264.9 BTC came from funds seized in the Bitfinex hack case.
The BTC first moved to two addresses that Arkham did not label. Within hours, those two addresses sent the funds to the Coinbase Prime deposit address.
Potapenko and Turogin are two Estonian men who operated HashFlare, a business that claimed to provide cloud mining services. The source says HashFlare generated more than $577 million in sales between 2015 and 2019, despite not having enough computing power to support those sales. The two men have pleaded guilty in the US and agreed to forfeit assets worth more than $400 million. The US Department of Justice said at the time that those assets would be used to compensate victims through a remission process.
40,285 BNB came from Alameda Research seizure
The 40,285 BNB was worth about $31.63 million and came from assets seized from Alameda Research.
That BNB was first sent to an unlabeled address, then moved in full to another new address. It was transferred several more times after that, and its current destination remains unclear.
Whether the transfer amounts to a sale remains unconfirmed
The source also notes that Donald Trump signed an executive order on March 6, 2025 to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. A White House explanation said the reserve would be funded with Bitcoin obtained by the Treasury Department through criminal or civil asset forfeiture, and that Bitcoin placed into the reserve would not be sold.
The US government has not explained the purpose of this latest transfer, so it remains unclear whether the movement of funds should be interpreted as a sale.
Another transfer to Coinbase Prime took place in July
This was not the first time this year that the US government moved seized crypto to Coinbase Prime. The source says that in July, it also transferred about $288 million in Bitcoin and Ether.
According to Arkham, addresses linked to the US government still hold about $27.5 billion in crypto assets, all obtained through law enforcement seizures. The government has not used taxpayer money to buy those holdings.
The House Financial Services Committee also passed the ARMA bill in September, which would write the Bitcoin reserve into law.