On-Chain Trackers Put US Government Crypto at About $20.5 Billion, With 306,790 Bitcoin and No Confirmed Sales

The paper value of Washington's crypto pile moves with the market. Tracking data now puts the US government's holdings at roughly $20.28 billion to $20.7 billion, depending on the tally.

The core is about 306,790 BTC and 17,430 ETH, according to a post on X. That tally values the combined holdings at about $20.28 billion.

On-chain platforms Onchain Lens and Arkham Intelligence show slightly more: about 306,795 BTC worth around $20.48 billion, plus 17,432 ETH worth about $33 million. The government also holds smaller amounts of WBNB, USDC and USDT. Counting everything, the total comes to between $20.57 billion and $20.7 billion.

The holdings are spread across 623 labeled addresses. The valuation uses a Bitcoin price near $67,000.

How the pile got built

The government did not buy these coins. Most came from criminal and civil forfeitures tied to high-profile cases.

The Silk Road darknet marketplace was one of the earliest big sources. The 2016 Bitfinex hack was the second, and that case alone delivered more than 94,000 BTC. That is close to a third of the Bitcoin the government holds.

For years the default was to auction seized coins. That changed in March 2025, when an executive order created a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and directed that forfeited Bitcoin be held indefinitely rather than sold. The same order set up a separate US Digital Asset Stockpile for non-Bitcoin assets. The Ether, stablecoins and other tokens fall under that second framework.

The figures are tracker estimates, not an official audit.

Price exposure and the Coinbase Prime transfer

The size of the position makes the math simple. Each $1,000 swing in Bitcoin moves the portfolio's value by roughly $300 million.

Analytics platforms recorded about $1 billion in BTC moving to Coinbase Prime custody addresses. No Bitcoin sales have been confirmed under the reserve policy. The transfers look consistent with custody management rather than disposal, according to the tracking data.

Analytics platforms such as Arkham Intelligence and Onchain Lens already label hundreds of federal addresses, so a meaningful transfer tends to show up quickly in public tracking.

The Binance seizure

A separate pool of government-controlled crypto may be forming. The FBI said the Justice Department had obtained court authorization to seize or restrain more than $1.2 billion of the roughly $6.3 billion stolen from Binance. The U.S. government and private sector have so far combined to freeze more than $2.7 billion of the stolen funds.

The FBI has attributed that theft to the North Korean group TraderTraitor. On Oct. 31 it said TraderTraitor was converting the stolen assets into other cryptocurrencies, mostly Ether. Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said on Oct. 31 that all customers would be fully reimbursed, with funds drawn from the exchange's roughly $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users reserve, its Futures Insurance Fund and corporate treasury.

Seizure does not mean the government keeps the money. In these cases the government typically files a forfeiture claim, and a judge then decides who has a legitimate claim to the recovered funds.

The FBI also blamed North Korea for a separate social engineering scheme, known as FaceStealer, that officials say resulted in the theft of $400 million worth of cryptocurrency over the last 18 months.

What comes next

Three things determine whether the federal stash grows or shrinks:

• Whether the reserve policy is softened or reversed.
• Whether new forfeitures keep adding to the pile.
• How the government handles non-Bitcoin assets in the Digital Asset Stockpile, which follow a separate framework.

Where the Binance funds end up is still open. A judge has to determine who has a legitimate claim before any of the $1.2 billion could become federal property.