833 BTC went to Coinbase Prime from a reserve that is not supposed to sell

Arkham tracked 833.599 BTC and about 40,285 BNB leaving US government wallets, worth roughly $71.6m and $31.63m. The bitcoin went through two unlabelled addresses and on to Coinbase Prime deposit addresses. Nobody has confirmed a sale.

“A transfer is not the same as a sale. Under a March 2025 executive order, bitcoin forfeited to the government is meant to be held in a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve”

— Хосе Роселл, Рыночный обозреватель

The two piles follow different rules

Executive order 14233, signed on 6 March 2025, created two things. The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve takes forfeited bitcoin and holds it. The United States Digital Asset Stockpile takes everything else, and the Treasury may sell from it.

The BNB came from the Alameda Research seizure and sits in the second category, where moving it to an exchange breaks no stated policy. The bitcoin sits in the first. A deposit address at Coinbase Prime is where you put coins you intend to sell, and a deposit is not a sale.

Where the coins came from

A US government bitcoin transfer used to end at an auction. The Marshals Service sold seized coins that way for a decade, and the March 2025 order was written to stop exactly that, so 833.599 BTC arriving at a trading venue is worth a note even with nothing else attached to it.

568.7 BTC trace to the forfeiture in the Potapenko and Turogin case. The other 264.9 BTC come from the Bitfinex hack recovery. Both arrived by criminal and civil forfeiture, which is the exact intake the executive order names for the reserve.

The $103m is 0.38% of the roughly $27.5bn in seized crypto the government holds. At the $71.6m quoted, the bitcoin is valued at $85,893 a coin, above the $84,280 it trades at this morning.

What would settle it

The Treasury has said nothing. The chain shows a deposit, not a trade, and a deposit at a prime broker can sit for months or amount to custody housekeeping. We counted the opposite case on the USDT forfeiture, where the government never needed an exchange at all because Tether burned the tokens and reissued them.

If the reserve works as written, the 833.599 BTC come back out, and the chain will show that without anyone announcing it.

Informational material, not investment advice. No sale has been confirmed, the Treasury has issued no statement, and a deposit at a prime broker is not evidence of one.