The U.S. government transferred 667.624 BTC, roughly $74.8 million at current prices, from a wallet tied to seized assets to a newly created address, on-chain analytics show.
Blockchain investigators say the coins were linked to the forfeiture in the long-running Potapenko/Turogin case, and that the transfer appears to be custodial rather than a sale.
Arkham Intelligence’s public explorer lists a number of U.S. government-controlled wallets and flagged the recent movement; the firm’s data also underpins broader estimates that U.S. agencies collectively hold hundreds of thousands of BTC across multiple custodial addresses.
Analysts cautioned that individual transfers are often routine security or housekeeping actions, consolidations, rekeying, or wallet rotation, rather than market exits.
The coins in this transfer trace back to assets seized in prosecutions tied to Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin, defendants in a high-profile fraud and cloud-mining case whose forfeited funds became part of U.S. government crypto holdings.
The Department of Justice’s case files show the origins of those forfeited assets. Market watchers said even custodial moves by government wallets can influence sentiment because they change the on-chain picture of available supply and are closely monitored by traders.
Still, firms that track public wallets, including Arkham and other analytics providers, stressed there has been no subsequent outbound movement that would indicate a sale.
The U.S. government’s broader Bitcoin holdings remain substantial. Public on-chain tallies and intelligence firms have placed total government-related balances in the high hundreds of thousands of BTC when aggregating seizures across agencies, though precise totals vary by methodology and which agencies’ wallets are counted.
Observers say transparent, documented custodial practices are increasingly important as governments retain and manage digital assets recovered through enforcement actions.
Authorities did not indicate any immediate plans to sell the transferred coins; analysts say such moves will be clearly signalled if and when policy or court instructions require disposition.