US government transfers Silk Road’s 30k Bitcoins to Coinbase

According to Blockchair, a wallet belonging to the U.S. government transferred Silk Road’s 30,175 Bitcoins (BTC) to cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase on April 2.

At the current price of BTC at around $65,000, the cost of the transfer is approximately $2 billion.

Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT noted that another 0.001 BTC worth $69 was transferred to a Coinbase deposit address in what appeared to be a test transaction.

Before that, the last confirmed sale by the government, which in late 2022 seized about 50,000 BTC associated with the Silk Road website, occurred in March 2023, when it unloaded 9,861 coins worth $216 million.

In January 2024, government officials announced the intention to sell part of the cryptocurrency associated with the darknet site Silk Road. The statement mentioned assets in the amount of 2,934 BTC.

At the end of February, the U.S. government transferred 15,085 seized Bitcoins from the hacked crypto exchange Bitfinex worth about $947 million to unknown addresses.

First, a test transfer of one BTC was made, and soon after, another 2,817 BTC worth $172.7 million were transferred. From the second wallet, 12,267 BTC worth $748.5 million were transferred.

According to Arkham, another U.S. government wallet contains about 94,600 Bitfinex bitcoins confiscated from hackers.

CryptoQuant analysts estimate that the United States government holds 210,392 BTC worth $14.4 billion, making it one of the largest holders of Bitcoin.

The U.S. Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, and other agencies last sold a single bitcoin in July 2023. Since then, the government’s unrealized profits have increased 2.4 times.