How much revenue has the U.S. government generated from seizing and selling Bitcoin over the past decade?

Author: David Canellis, Blockworks; Compiler: Songxue, Golden Finance

Bitcoin holders have a lot to be happy about in the new year: rising prices, spot ETFs appear to be almost approved , and a record number of Bitcoins unchanged in a year.

The US government should also be happy. As a result of the price increase,the Federal Reserve now holds at least $8.3 billion in Bitcoin, up from $5 billion less than three months ago.

Between November 2020 and 2022, authorities seized a total of 207,189 Bitcoin (BTC) in three separate operations linked to the far-reaching darknet market Silk Road , its hacker Jimmy Zhu, and the hackers of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.

After officials dumped 9,861 bitcoins that once belonged to Silk Road on Coinbase last February, less than 5% of those assets have been sold. The transactions sold for an average of $21,800 per Bitcoin, netting a total of $215 million, about half the current price.

U.S. lawyers at the time said they planned to sell Silk Road’s remaining Bitcoins in four tranches over the next year — 104,100 Bitcoins worth $1 billion, compared with today’s value $1.8 billion—and that deadline expires in two months.

The US government sold Bitcoin prematurely

So far, only one batch of transactions is possible Already processed, when the U.S. Department of Justice sent 8,200 Bitcoins (worth $252 million at the time and now worth $350 million) to Coinbase last July. But it has not yet been confirmed whether any transaction actually took place.

If these transactions are considered sales,the United States has generated $640 million in revenue from the seizure and sale of Bitcoin over the past decade.

During this time, the price of Bitcoin increased 70 times. If the U.S. government had chosen to hold all seized Bitcoin rather than sell it, the federal government would still have approximately 400,000 Bitcoins (worth $1.74 billion) now, nearly double its current reserves.

In the coming months, the market may see more Silk Road Bitcoins sold by the U.S. government. However, there is currently no timetable for the sale of the Bitcoin seized from Bitfinex hackers Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan.

Switch the chart to USD to see how much the US missed out (numbers rounded)

Anyway, according to According to research by at least one group of researchers last year, the United States may have the largest government Bitcoin reserves in the world. The U.S.’s Bitcoin reserves far exceed those of El Salvador, Ukraine, Bhutan, Venezuela, and Finland, which together hold 4,000 Bitcoins (valued at $172 million).