US government transfers 10,000 Silk Road BTC to Coinbase Prime, Bitcoin price holds steady

A Bitcoin (BTC) address that received 10,000 BTC from a US government wallet two weeks ago moved the entire stash to a Coinbase Prime deposit wallet today, according to on-chain data.

The BTC moved in the transaction is part of the crypto seized from the now-defunct dark web market Silk Road. The amount is equivalent to over $592 million and was moved to a Coinbase Prime hot wallet.

On Apr. 2, the US government moved 31,800 BTC to another wallet and has been distributing this amount to different addresses since then.

Notably, according to on-chain data platform Arkham Intelligence, the US government still holds over $1 billion in Silk Road-related BTC. 

The US authorities seized 50,000 BTC tied to the Silk Road when they arrested James Zhong in November 2022. Zhong is accused of hacking the dark web market in 2012 and stealing the seized amount.

The last known selling movement related to Silk Road’s BTC stash happened in March 2023, when the US sold 9,861.17 BTC.

Resilience amid potential ‘government dump’

“Government dump” movements became notorious within the crypto community after the German government sold nearly 50,000 BTC seized after closing the piracy platform Movie2k. The episode lasted 23 days and caused Bitcoin’s price to fall 17% between mid-June and mid-July.

However, this time Bitcoin is showing resilience amid the US government movement. Despite falling 4% over the past 24 hours, the price variation over the last hour is positive 0.5%.

A report published by CoinGecko in late July revealed that governments around the world hold nearly 483,400 BTC, with the US government taking the top rank with a total stash of 213,297 BTC.

Removing 10,000 BTC from the recent US government movement and considering the current price of $59,160.64, the total amount held by sovereign states is nearly $28 billion.

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