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The US government has moved around $606,000 worth of BTC to a Coinbase Prime wallet, research from on-chain intelligence portal Arkham shows. While the value of the cryptocurrency involved was minuscule compared to the overall stash in the government wallets, the origin of these BTC can be traced back to the Bitfinex hack of 2016. The move is raising questions about whether this is a test run to transfer these BTC to institutional wallets, signaling the end of this nearly decade-long high-profile hack.
The 2016 Bitfinex Hack
The cryptocurrency exchange witnessed one of the largest cyber attacks in the history of the digital currency market, with users losing 119,754 BTC in total. Ilya Lichtenstein exploited a vulnerability in Bitfinex’s multi-signature withdrawal system, authorizing over 2,000 fraudulent transactions, and was able to steal a huge amount from the exchange’s wallets.
American authorities recovered roughly 94,000 BTC from the hackers, and the stash has been sitting in government wallets ever since. It is worth a whopping $7.1 billion based on the cryptocurrency’s latest valuation. Ten years ago, it was worth just $71 million.
Arkham tweeted:
Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan, were both co-accused in this case and were arrested in 2022 under money laundering charges. Both received multi-year sentences after pleading guilty.
 
What Will Become of the US Government’s $25 Billion Stash?
While Arkham didn’t exactly say that the US government was dumping its multi-billion-dollar stash, Twitterati were quick to criticize Arkham’s choice of words, which may not be the case.
One user replied:
Another quipped:
The truth is that there is a court-mandated restitution process in which the US government is obliged to return the BTC directly to the affected exchange, rather than liquidating it first and then paying it back.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has been actively moving the seized Bitcoin to institutional wallets (such as Coinbase Prime) as part of this court-mandated restitution process. The entire process must be monitored from start to finish, as the amount involved exceeds 94,000 BTC, worth over $7 billion. Work from on-chain firms like Arkham is absolutely crucial in this regard, as the US government may be inclined to go the other way.
Even if the government transfers all the Bitfinex hack reserves, it will still have more than $17 billion in crypto left in its wallets. All of this remaining crypto was also seized from other criminal entities, including major chunks from the darknet marketplace Silk Road, Prince Group, and other FBI/DOJ/DEA investigations.