In 2021, the US managed to seize and sell at least 185,000 BTC. The 94,000 seized this year managed to surpass USD 4,000 million.
Along with the announcement of the seizure of at least 94,000 BTC in February, allegedly from the Bitfinex attack that took effect in 2016, the US government got back to the bitcoin super-whale list. Almost six weeks into 2022, the amount seized runs parallel with just over half of the 185,000 BTC in 2021.
These 94,000 BTC got migrated from various addresses in pieces of between 10,000 BTC and 20,000 BTC and got collected in a single profile. A week later, the United States Department of Justice revealed another prominent confiscation of BTC funds and the arrest of a couple of attackers that got subsequently accused of laundering the currencies extracted from Bitfinex in 2016.
On the other hand, with this seizure, the US government comes back as a super-whale again, as the term whale usually aims at holders than control more than 1,000 BTC.
In this regard, a study made by Glassnode the last year highlights that the holders of more than 1,000 BTC or whales are 2,200 entities. Of these super holders, the whales that carry more than 5,000 BTC do not exceed 220.
In a chart highlighted by Glassnode, the US government ranked third position due to the amount of BTC it has under control. Grayscale and MicroStrategy, the first two entities leading the first positions on the chart, are also public companies. When it comes to private companies to get considered as super holders, Block. one would enter in second place with at least140,000 under control, which is equivalent to USD 6.2 billion.
Few Whales Exceed 100 Thousand BTC
If users consider that public and private companies have bitcoin under their control, along with the nations that have revealed that they manage BTC and bitcoin-based ETFs in their economies, there is a minimal list of those that exceed 100 thousand BTC.
There is just one representative for each division: MicroStrategy with an amount marked at 125,051 BTC, Block. one with 140,000 BTC, Bulgaria, that reached 213,519 BTC, and finally, the Grayscale, with at least 643,572 BTC.
The total of BTC under these four organizations control goes around 1,122,142 BTC, which shows a prominent agglomeration since it is 73.4% of the total held by the 61 entities that appeared in bitcointreasuries.org
According to an IRS report, In 2021, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) alone managed to confiscate at least eight times more bitcoin than in 2020. The total amount of digital assets confiscated by legal entities from August 2019 to August 2020 is marked at USD 137 million. Meanwhile, during the fiscal year 2021, an amount that shows USD 1.2 billion in confiscated bitcoin got approached by the country.
By: Jenson Nuñez
