A wallet Arkham identifies as holding U.S. government-seized bitcoin moved roughly $1.01 billion on Oct. 8. Later transactions routed the coins to addresses Arkham labels Coinbase Prime deposits, which shows an exchange-linked destination but not a sale.
A wallet Arkham identifies as holding U.S. government-seized bitcoin moved roughly $1.01 billion on Oct. 8, and subsequent transactions routed the funds to addresses the blockchain analytics firm labels Coinbase Prime deposits. The trail establishes an exchange-linked destination, not a sale.
How the coins reached Coinbase Prime
The original transaction, confirmed at 9:33:50 a.m. ET, created outputs totaling 12,267.02329833 BTC. Almost all of it went to an unlabeled address, while 0.0012 BTC went directly to an Arkham-labeled Coinbase Prime deposit address.
Further transactions then sent 3,000 BTC twice to the same Coinbase-labeled address used in the initial transfer. A third 3,000 BTC tranche and the remaining approximately 3,267 BTC went to a second address that Arkham also labels a Coinbase Prime deposit address.
Arkham labels the sending address as seized Bitfinex hacker funds under its U.S. Government entity. Mempool.space independently records the addresses and amounts, but the ownership attribution comes from Arkham.
Custody shuffle, not a confirmed liquidation
Coinbase Prime provides both custody and trading services, so the destination alone cannot distinguish storage from liquidation. The government already has a relationship with the platform: Coinbase announced in July 2024 that the U.S. Marshals Service selected Prime for custody and advanced trading services.
Crypto Briefing reports that analysts at Galaxy Research and Arkham characterized the activity as custody consolidation, and that no confirmed liquidations have been tied to the movements. Still, Bitcoin fell approximately $4,000 as the transfers unfolded.
Estimates put the U.S. government's seized Bitcoin holdings at around 307,000 to 325,000 BTC, valued at roughly $25 billion. Crypto Briefing says changes in that estimate will show whether the story is about custody logistics or supply reaching the market.
Sources: The Defiant, Crypto Briefing
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