US government wallets send 833 bitcoin to Coinbase Prime in their first move since August

On October 7, 2026, wallets linked to US authorities sent 833.6 BTC and 40,285 BNB out within a nine-hour window, more than $103 million in total.

US government-linked addresses are estimated to hold around $28 billion in assets, mostly bitcoin: about 324,000 BTC valued at approximately $27.7 billion.

After the 833.6 BTC moved, the US government still holds 323,693.83 BTC worth $27.72 billion.

Coinbase provides custody and advanced trading services to the US Marshals Service; the government used to rely on auctions to sell seized bitcoin, but law enforcement now works directly with Coinbase to handle its Class 1 digital assets.

Federal authorities shifted 0.00115539 BTC to Coinbase Prime in a test transfer and moved 264.86266831 BTC, coins associated with the 2016 Bitfinex hack, to a new wallet.

"Most likely a test transaction before sending all the remaining coins,"

A 568 BTC transaction followed with coins from the Potapenko-Turogin fraud case, in which Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin ran a fake cloud mining operation called Hashflare.

The $31.63 million of BNB came from forfeited FTX wallets; a 0.127 BNB test transfer from the FTX bankruptcy preceded the 40,285.07 BNB transfer.

On-chain analysts at EmberCN, Resonance, Arkham and Lookonchain all flagged the activity as it happened.

Sani, the onchain analyst and operator of timechainindex.com, was the first to discover the movements.

The 2016 Bitfinex hack saw 120,000 BTC stolen; the government caught the hackers, Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, and confiscated around 94,636 BTC from them years later.

Wallets managed by the US Marshals, a DOJ agency, moved 833.6 BTC in their first bitcoin transfer since Aug. 26.

The two transfers together were worth about $103.19 million.

The Bitfinex and Hashflare legs sum to 832.86 BTC, about 0.7 BTC short of the reported 833.6 BTC total.

The 264.86 BTC Bitfinex leg is about 0.28% of the roughly 94,636 BTC confiscated from the hackers.

The 833.6 BTC moved equals about 0.26% of the 323,693.83 BTC the government still holds.

The $103.19 million moved is about 0.37% of the roughly $28 billion held by government-linked addresses.

Both outlets' valuations imply a similar bitcoin price: about $85,800 per coin for the transfer and about $85,600 for the remaining holdings.

A separate transaction involved approximately 264,863 BTC tied to the 2016 Bitfinex hack.

Crypto Briefing's 264,863 BTC figure for the Bitfinex transaction is about 2.8 times the 94,636 BTC confiscated in that case.

The current read on the movements is that they represent routine custody or consolidation work, not a change in strategy.

Funds that pass through several intermediary addresses before settling somewhere unlabeled tend to draw scrutiny, since that pattern sometimes precedes an exchange deposit.