The United States government has moved some of its Bitcoin holdings to a new wallet. The move happened amid talks by the Trump administration to shift all its confiscated assets to the national crypto reserve. The movement of these kinds of funds is the usual practice, but this latest transfer drew the attention of the public.
The transaction was initiated from a small government-controlled wallet. The address was known to hold the confiscated funds in the Sae-Heng. This is one of the most significant moves with the government also mmobing funds tied to the Brian Krewson to a new address. On-chain wallet tracking service, Arkham tracked the transaction, noting that 93 BTC valued at around $8 million was moved. The platform also mentioned that 884 ETH valued at $1.77 million were also moved to a new address.
The original wallet spent $10 worth of BTC before it moved the remaining unspent funds to a new address. The $8 million is quite small for the US government, but all coin movements are being monitored to build a reserve. The main US government wallet still holds $17 billion in several digital assets, with 198,000 BTC as the biggest portion of the tokens in the reserve.
United States government moves funds from pig butchering scam
The Sae-Heng wallet refers to the funds confiscated for an alleged pig butchering scam carried out against United States residents. The funds were seized on Binance in a wallet owned by Wanpadet Sae-Heng. The US government confiscated the funds two years ago after Binance sent a direct transaction to the storage wallet. All the confiscated BTC had been moved to a new wallet in 2022. In total, the United States government seized 97 BTC, 2.56 DOGE, 884 ETH, AND 85M ADA from Sae-Heng.
In the case of personal scams, the funds are usually returned to the owners, instead of being used by the government as a reserve. The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act is still in its early stages of approval, but expectations are high that the bill may pass during the current US Congress mandate. If passed, the makeup of the reserve will come from forfeitures. The president signed an executive order to create the crypto reserve, which intended to use the BTC already in the government’s wallet.
Crypto advisor David Sacks also mentioned that the US government will carry out an audit to determine its exact holdings and how much assets are available for a reserve. The key takeaway is that the government has mentioned that it will not sell its BTC reserves. The United States currently holds the largest amount of BTC, with China coming in second place with about 190K BTC.
The United States government is not actively accumulating Bitcoin but the country has decided against selling despite plans to divest in 2023. Since then, the government has continued to increase its holdings significantly. The US government has also continued to split its holdings based on the origin, with a hack or exploit taking the lead. This means that there may be plans to return some of the funds to affected victims, while others, like the one from Silk Road may remain as part of the crypto reserve.