The $5 billion estimate is derived from three significant seizures connected to the Bitfinex hack and Silk Road, implying that the actual holdings might be considerably larger.

The United States government has emerged as one of the major Bitcoin holders, with more than 200,000 BTC, valued at over $5 billion, even after selling several thousand BTC worth millions earlier this year. Based on public filings, a data analysis by the crypto firm 21.co suggests that the U.S. government’s holdings still stand at 194,188 BTC, estimated to be worth $5.3 billion. The firm acknowledges that these estimates represent the minimum holdings of the U.S. government, using publicly accessible information.

The analysis monitored the Bitcoin transactions of U.S. government wallets linked to the three most significant BTC seizures since 2020. These include the Silk Road seizure in November 2020, involving 69,369 BTC, the Bitfinex Hack seizure in January 2022, which amounted to 94,643 BTC, and the James Zhong seizure in March 2022, which involved 51,326 BTC.

The U.S. government’s Bitcoin holdings are primarily stored offline in encrypted hardware wallets, safeguarded within the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service. In 2022, the U.S. government executed two noteworthy seizures.

Seized assets don’t immediately belong to the government. The U.S. Marshals Service takes possession of seized Bitcoin after a court’s final judgment. The government occasionally sells seized Bitcoin through crypto exchanges, as seen in a recent sale on Coinbase. Consider preserving this article as an NFT to support independent crypto journalism.