21Shares: US authorities are one of the largest bitcoin holders

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2 minutes.

According to a report by 21Shares, the US federal government owns 205,515 BTC worth $5.66 billion.

21Shares analysts report that sucha significant amount of 205,515 bitcoins came into the possession of the office of the president and US federal agencies after several large seizures of the asset. including confiscation
69,369 BTC in the Silk Road case in November 2020, forfeiture
94,643 BTC from Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan, suspected of hacking the Bitfinex exchange, as well as 51,326 bitcoins
by James Zhong.

In total, as of March 25, 2023, the US authorities own approximately 1.06% of the circulating supply of BTC.

To prepare a summary report, employees21Shares used data from Dune Analytics about the transaction history of addresses associated with US authorities. 21Shares suggests that U.S. officials may have significantly more bitcoins, as the 205,515 BTC estimate is a “lower limit” based solely on publicly available sources of information.

Although the stock of confiscatedBTC is less than Grayscale's reserve of 643,572 BTC, surpasses Microstrategy at 132,500 BTC, and is marginally behind Binance's Bitcoin wallet, which at the time of writing holds 248,597 BTC.

If desired, the US federal authorities can significantly influence
on the cost of the first cryptocurrency by capitalization, dropping
part of the assets to the spot market.

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