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By seizing illicit funds from criminals over the years, the US government has unknowingly become one of the biggest bitcoin whales in the industry.
Under the control of the US authorities are currently the 5th, 8th and 13th wallets with the largest number of bitcoins stored in the world. This wallet was identified as belonging to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI by Blockchain.com explorer.
Together, this trio of wallets totals 213,839 BTC in the hands of the US government, an amount equivalent to more than $4.8 billion with a $22,900 quote that bitcoin registered on Tuesday (24).
By compiling this number of bitcoins separated into three wallets, it can be estimated that the US government is among the three entities that store the most bitcoins in the world. Two addresses were forwarded to the report by Blockseer, a blockchain investigation firm.
In BitInfoCharts’ Bitcoin Rich List, a list that ranks the 100 largest bitcoin wallets in the world, Binance emerges as the holder of the largest wallets in the industry, holding just 248,597 BTC.
Adding together the separate funds in the three US government wallets, the country would be the second largest holder of bitcoins in the world. However, this classification is impossible to confirm because many addresses are still unknown.
It should also be taken into account that the first bitcoin mined by Satoshi Nakamoto has remained in their wallet ever since. Estimates are that the cryptocurrency’s creator owns between 700,000 and 1.3 million BTC — the community generally considers it to have 1 million BTC for projection purposes —, which makes Satoshi the world’s largest bitcoin holder.
US government wallet
The largest US government bitcoin wallet is bc1qazcm763858nkj2dj986etajv6wquslv8uxwczt, ranked 5th largest in the world on BitInfoCharts.
This wallet was created in February 2022 and received 94,643 BTC on the 1st of the month through seven transactions with amounts ranging from 1 BTC to 44,000 BTC. So far, these funds remain stuck in the wallet because the controller has not made any withdrawals since then.
On Blockchain.com, these wallets are marked as owned by the FBI, such as wallet bc1qa5wkgaew2dkv56kfvj49j0av5nml45x9ek9hz6, which ranks 8th among the largest wallets in the industry.
The wallet in question held the 69,370 BTC it received in two transactions on November 3, 2020, when it was created, and the funds have not been transferred to date.
Blockchain.com points to Silk Road as the source of funds for this wallet. In reality, the deep web marketplace created by Ross Ulbricht is largely responsible for fattening the cryptocurrency wallets currently controlled by the US government.
Bitcoin was the main currency used in a drug market that was shut down by the FBI in 2013, the year Ulbricht was arrested and sentenced to life in prison.
At that time, the US federal police confiscated 173,991 thousand BTC, but there were still 444 thousand BTC missing from Silk Road. In November 2020, 70,000 BTC mysteriously moved after sitting idle for seven years. In the same month the portfolio was replenished, indicating that the fund remains under US control.
Keep in mind that although the US government still has bitcoins in its portfolio, they have made several sales of seized assets in police operations. In 2014, for example, entrepreneur Tim Draper acquired 30,000 BTC seized from Silk Road for an undisclosed amount. Other auctions in this style have continued since then.
Still within the scope of Silk Road, another operation that generated a lot of bitcoins for the US was against James Zhong, also known as “Loaded”, a bitcoiner who was very active on the BitcoinTalk forums between 2012 and 2017.
Last November, the US Department of Justice published the largest bitcoin seizure ever by the entity: 50,676 BTC stolen from Silk Road by Zhong.
It is a fund that supplies the 13th largest bitcoin wallet in the world, bc1qmxjefnuy06v345v6vhwpwt05dztztmx4g3y7wp, which is also owned by the US government.
Zhong had obtained this large amount of bitcoin — equivalent to $3.3 billion at the time of the seizure — by exploiting a loophole in the Silk Road withdrawal system in September 2012.
His secret remained protected for almost a decade, until in November 2021, his cryptocurrency was confiscated by US authorities during a search of his home in Georgia (USA).
Bitcoins were found in devices he hid in an underground vault and in a single-board computer that authorities said was hidden under a blanket in a popcorn can kept in a bathroom cabinet.
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The FBI and US State Department Wallets store thousands of Bitcoins; look at the address that appears first on the Portal do Bitcoin .
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