The US government moved some of its Bitcoin (BTC) holdings to a new wallet. The move happens amid talk of shifting all confiscated assets to a national crypto reserve.
The movement of funds is standard procedure for some assets, but this time, the transaction drew more attention. The transaction originated with a smaller government-controlled wallet. The address is tagged as holding the Sae-Heng confiscated funds. This is one of the more significant transfers of funds, after the government moved 298.93 AVAX linked to Brian Krewson to a new address.
Arkham, the on-chain wallet tracking service, tracked the transaction for 93.96 BTC, valued at around $8M. Additionally, 884.33 ETH valued at $1.77M were shifted to a new address.
The original wallet spent $10 in BTC, then sent the unspent funds to a new address. The $8M is a relatively small sum for the US Government, but all coin movements are watched for intentions of building a reserve of confiscated coins. The main US Government wallet still holds over $17B in crypto assets, with 198K BTC as the biggest part of the reserves.
BTC funds came from ‘pig butchering’ scams
The Sae-Heng wallet refers to funds confiscated for an alleged ‘pig butchering’ scam perpetrated against US victims. The funds were seized from a Binance account belonging to Wanpadet Sae-Heng. The BTC were confiscated by the US Government two years ago, when Binance sent a direct transaction to the storage wallet . All the confiscated BTC was moved once to a new address in 2022.
In total, the confiscated funds from Sae-Heng included 97.33 BTC, 2.56M DOGE, 884.33 ETH, and 85M ADA. In the case of personal scams, the seized funds may be returned to the previous owners, instead of being used for a government reserve.
The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act is still in the early stages of approval, but there are expectations that the bill may pass during the current US Congress mandate. If passed, the main source of coins for the reserve would come from forfeitures.
On March 7, US President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to establish a crypto reserve , which intended to use the BTC already possessed by the US government’s wallet. Crypto advisor David Sachs stated that the US government crypto holdings would undergo an audit to determine the exact holdings available for a reserve.
The US Government topped the chart for the biggest state holders of BTC, surpassing China’s confiscated holdings.| Source: Bitcoin Treasuries
The key takeaway is that the US Government has now signalled it will not sell its BTC reserves. The US Government is the biggest state holder of BTC, with China in the second place, holding around 190K BTC.
The USA is not actively accruing BTC, but has decided against liquidations, despite plans to divest BTC around 2023. Since then, the government’s holdings have appreciated significantly. The US Government still splits its holdings based on the specific hack or exploit. Some of the funds may be returned to the affected victims, while others, like the BTC from the Silk Road wallets, may remain as part of a crypto reserve.
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