Wallets tied to the US government shuffled roughly $297 million worth of seized Bitcoin and Ether to Coinbase Prime this week. The transfers, tracked by on-chain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, represent one of the larger government crypto movements in recent memory and have immediately drawn scrutiny from traders watching for signs of a potential sell-off.
What moved and where it came from
The transfers occurred over July 13-14 and involved both BTC and ETH originating from government-controlled wallets. A significant portion of the assets traces back to the BTC-e exchange, which was seized by authorities in 2017. BTC-e was one of the crypto industry’s early cautionary tales, a platform that allegedly facilitated money laundering on a massive scale before getting shut down.
Other forfeited assets in the mix are linked to individuals like Ryan Farace and Brian Krewson. Farace’s drug trafficking operation alone contributed to the forfeiture of over 4,000 BTC between 2018 and 2021.
The funds landed at Coinbase Prime, the institutional arm of the publicly traded exchange. Coinbase Prime offers custody, over-the-counter trading, and structured liquidation services.
