On July 29 (GMT+0), Arkham Intelligence revealed the shocking news that the US government had moved nearly 29,800 Bitcoins, worth $2.02 billion, seized from the dark web market, Silk Road, to an unspecified address. This address then split into two transactions, sending 19,800 BTC and 10,000 BTC to two different addresses.
Arkham analysts suspect that the move of 10,000 BTC worth $670 million might be a deposit to a custodial entity or institutional service.
Notably, this sudden move comes just two days after Donald Trump declared he would never sell any Bitcoin and promised to create a “strategic national Bitcoin reserve” if re-elected.
This event has confused and concerned investors because a move by the US could significantly impact the price of Bitcoin, often indicating imminent asset sales. Bitcoin’s value dropped nearly 5% following the US move, from a session high of $70,000 to a low of $66,360 — a 1.6% decrease in the past 24 hours.
The reason for the US’s latest Bitcoin move remains unclear. Many investors speculate that this action might be related to the July 1 agreement between the US Marshals Service and the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, where they signed a deal with Coinbase to “safeguard” the US government’s cryptocurrency assets. Other opinions suggest this might be a preparation for the strategic Bitcoin reserve plan for the US, as announced by Donald Trump two days ago.
According to Arkham’s statistics, before the move, the US held nearly 183,500 BTC, valued at $12.3 billion in reserves and smaller amounts of other cryptocurrencies. Most of these funds came from various confiscations of illegal cryptocurrency assets.
