Bitcoin Price at Risk? US Government Transfers Seized Tokens to Coinbase Wallet
According to Glassnode, a blockchain analytics firm, approximately 40,000 Bitcoin held in wallets linked to law enforcement seizures in the United States are currently being transferred.
Most of these transactions appear to be internal transfers.
On-chain data reveals that 9,861 of the seized Bitcoin were confiscated from the Silk Road hacker and sent to a Coinbase cluster. PeckShield, an on-chain security firm, confirmed that the roughly 40,000 BTC had been consolidated into two wallets controlled by the US government.
Approximately 40k $BTC from wallets associated with US Government law enforcement seizures are on the move.
Of these, the majority appear to be internal transfers (so far), however approximately 9,861 $BTC seized from the Silk Road hacker have been sent to our Coinbase cluster. pic.twitter.com/afuEYcV18L
— glassnode (@glassnode) March 7, 2023
This movement of $1 billion worth of Bitcoin between US government wallets, including a transfer of $217 million to Coinbase, has caused concern within the cryptocurrency community about a potential sell-off that could drive down BTC prices.
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The seized tokens stem from the 2013 raid of the illegal goods and services marketplace the Silk Road, which was an online marketplace founded by Ross Ulbricht that facilitated the sale and transfer of illicit goods through a combination of VPNs and cryptocurrency.
The potential sell-off of 40k Bitcoin is feared to put downward pressure on the cryptocurrency’s price, especially considering that Bitcoin has already experienced over 9% loss in the last week.
It remains to be seen what kind of support there is at the sub-$21k level, indicating that more short-term losses may be on the horizon.
Alexander Stefanov
Reporter at CoinsPress
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
