The US government wallet previously moved seized bitcoins from a well-known darknet platform.
According to Blockchair, a U.S. government-owned wallet transferred 30,175 Bitcoin (BTC) from Silk Road to cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase on April 2.
With the current BTC price of around $65,000, the transfer would cost around $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 government’s last confirmed sale occurred in March 2023, when it seized about 50,000 BTC in connection with the Silk Road website in late 2022, unloading 9,861 coins worth $216 million.
In January 2024, government officials announced their intention to sell a portion of the cryptocurrency associated with the darknet site Silk Road. The statement mentioned assets of 2,934 BTC.
In late February, the U.S. government transferred 15,085 bitcoins (worth approximately $947 million) seized from hacked cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex to an unknown address.
First, a test transfer of 1 BTC was made, followed shortly by 2,817 BTC worth $172.7 million. From the second wallet, 12,267 BTC worth $748.5 million was transferred.
Another U.S. government wallet contained approximately 94,600 Bitfinex bitcoins seized from hackers, according to Arkham.
CryptoQuant analysts estimate that the U.S. government is one of the largest holders of Bitcoin, holding 210,392 BTC worth $14.4 billion.
The U.S. Department of Justice, 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.