Based on a recent report by 21Shares, it has been revealed that the US federal government currently possesses a whopping 205,515 BTC, which is equivalent to a staggering $5.66 billion.
Analysts at 21Shares have indicated that this massive amount of 205,515 bitcoins was obtained by the presidential office and federal agencies through several major seizures of the asset.
The seizures include the confiscation of 69,369 BTC in the Silk Road case in November 2020, 94,643 BTC from Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan, who were suspected of hacking the Bitfinex exchange, and 51,326 bitcoins from James Zhong.
As of March 25, 2023, it has been estimated that the US authorities own about 1.06% of the circulating supply of BTC.
To put together the report, 21Shares relied on data from Dune Analytics regarding the transaction history of addresses linked to US authorities.
21Shares also suggests that US officials may have a significantly higher amount of bitcoins than the estimated 205,515 BTC, as this figure is a “lower limit” based only on publicly available sources of information.
Although the quantity of confiscated bitcoin is lesser than Grayscale’s reserve of 643,572 BTC, it outperforms Microstrategy’s 132,500 BTC and is only slightly behind Binance’s bitcoin wallet, which currently holds 248,597 BTC.
The US federal authorities have the option of impacting the value of the leading cryptocurrency through capitalization by dumping some of the assets on the spot market if they so choose.