U.S. government is now largest Bitcoin whale with $5b in BTC
The U.S. government is one of the world’s largest holders of Bitcoin (BTC), storing about 200,000 BTC in hardware wallets. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the U.S. Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service and other departments control a number of encrypted hardware wallets. Most of the assets held in government accounts have been confiscated from cybercriminals. According to public records provided by research firm 21.co, the last three seizures brought approximately 215,000 BTC into the U.S. government treasury. Source: Dune In 2020, the Department of Justice confiscated approximately 69,000 BTC that once belonged to the founder of the Silk Road darknet marketplace, Ross Ulbricht. On Oct. 2, 2023, he published a post on the 10th anniversary of his prison sentence. You might also like: 10,000 BTC tied to Silk Road on the move In January 2022, after the arrest of Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan, who were involved in the ha...