The U.S. government moved bitcoin for the first time since August 26, with federally managed wallets shifting 833.6 BTC valued at approximately $71 million on Tuesday. The transfer involved assets traced to the Potapenko-Turogin fraud case and the 2016 Bitfinex hack.
Around 11 a.m. Eastern time, U.S. Marshals—a Department of Justice agency—initiated the transfers alongside moving $31.63 million worth of BNB from forfeited FTX wallets. According to onchain analysts, the movements included a test transfer of 0.00115539 BTC to Coinbase Prime and a transfer of 264.86 BTC to a new wallet. The latter coins were associated with the 2016 Bitfinex hack, in which 120,000 BTC were stolen from the exchange. Federal authorities later apprehended hackers Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan and confiscated approximately 94,636 BTC from the theft.
A second transfer involved 568 BTC from the Potapenko-Turogin fraud case, which centered on two men who operated a fraudulent cloud mining service called Hashflare, selling hashrate contracts from nonexistent data centers.
Coinbase Prime, which provides custody and trading services to the U.S. Marshals Service, received the test transfers. This represents a shift from the government's previous practice of auctioning seized bitcoin. Law enforcement now works directly with Coinbase to manage confiscated digital assets classified as "Class 1."
Following Tuesday's transfers, the U.S. government maintains a holdings of 323,693.83 BTC valued at approximately $27.72 billion.
