Many people wish to have a large Bitcoin wallet. This is true even for the US Government, which has had mixed views on digital assets in the past.
Data shared by Negentropic, co-founders of on-chain analytics platform Glassnode, reveals that it still has $4.08 billion worth of BTC as of February 2022, even though the US government has sold the vast majority of Bitcoins it holds through confiscation.
The US Government sits behind MicroStrategy and Grayscale in #Bitcoin holdings, owning more than $TSLA. If the US decides to sell, big players will get a huge opportunity to buy in bulk. pic.twitter.com/RYGvsFBOHm
β π‘π²π΄π²π»ππΏπΌπ½πΆπ° (@Negentropic_) February 9, 2022
Interestingly, the US government’s assets are more than double the assets of Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), at $1.86 billion. Tesla included it on their balance sheet last year, although it stopped taking Bitcoin as payment shortly after.
In terms of Bitcoin assets, the US government is behind the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust with just $27.93 billion and MicroStrategy with $5.43 billion.
The US Marshals Service, the US government’s primary agency responsible for auctioning cryptocurrency assets, had seized and auctioned more than 185,000 bitcoins worth $8.6 billion as of December last year.
Latest U.S. Seized Crypto Amount
As the government has amassed extraordinary amounts of cryptocurrencies in recent years, analysts believe the US government’s cryptocurrency wallet will continue to grow as cybercrime continues to grow at its current rate.
As we recently reported, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the seizure of $3.6 billion worth of Bitcoins stolen from crypto exchange Bitfinex in 2016.
Over the past few years, the rise in cryptocurrency-related crimes has caused the government to seize enormous amounts of crypto, thus diverting it to HODL.
While the US government’s major crypto wallets add to the overall positive narrative for cryptocurrencies, the possibility of the government liquidating their positions, which could trigger a bearish trend in the market, also raises skepticism and anxiety.