Why is the U.S. government reluctant to sell Bitcoin, which is sitting on $5 billion?

Written by: Michael del Castillo, Forbes; Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News

As the U.S. government cracks down on cryptocurrency businesses, it appears they have reached a point where they cannot tolerate cryptocurrencies. However, there is a flip side to the love-hate relationship: **The Treasury Department is sitting on 207,189 Bitcoins worth $5 billion, the largest government Bitcoin holding ever. **

**While many other countries are dealing with Bitcoin, the U.S. government has been steadily increasing its Bitcoin reserves through confiscations, according to new Forbes research. **According to research by Sachin Jaitley, general partner at investment advisory firm Morgan Creek Capital, the U.S. held 69,640 bitcoins last year, accounting for 94% of all bitcoins held in global government treasuries.

Elementus, a New York-based crypto analytics startup and Morgan Creek portfolio company, studied events such as the 2020 DOJ seizure of $1 billion worth of bitcoins by comparing them to transaction records visible on the public bitcoin blockchain. Data provided. According to the Elementus paper, “Through public information provided by the media and the blockchain, Elementus is able to map the landscape of sovereign crypto wallets and update and maintain them over time.”

By 2022, this research effort covers 11 countries with Bitcoin. “All these bitcoins are held by these government agencies,” said Elementus CEO Max Galka. “But that doesn’t mean these governments only hold these bitcoins, or that other governments haven’t used bitcoins.”

By comparing these holdings with 10 years of money supply information and inflation data, Jaitley, 42, concluded that “as the money supply grows, and as inflation concerns mount, sovereign levels Bitcoin adoption is also increasing,” he said, “so there is a statistically significant relationship.” The study did not include North Korea, for which they said inflation data was unavailable.

The table shows bitcoin flows in 11 countries from 2013 to 2022, according to blockchain analytics firm Elementus. Most assets are from government seizures and information is not comprehensive.

This argument is not very rigorous. First, according to data from software engineer and researcher Jameson Lopp, between 2014 and 2023, a total of $366 million worth of Bitcoin was sold in 11 auctions in the United States. On the other hand, the government apparently never bought Bitcoin, so while it may be intentional to keep most of it, there was never the intention to buy Bitcoin either. **Additionally, data from Lope suggests that the sale could result in a potential appreciation loss of $4.8 billion.

**While Jaitley sees government ownership of Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation, given the size of the U.S. government’s balance sheet, it’s unlikely that the $5 billion reserve will serve as any meaningful hedge. **German state prosecutor Jana Ringwald said that immediate sales of confiscated assets are not mandatory in Germany. She said there was "100 percent certainty that some unsold items will be seized in the near future" and that "prosecutors may order an 'emergency sale,' but they may not."

Leslie Sammis is a Tampa-based criminal defense attorney whose practice includes numerous Binance forfeit cases. He said Justice Department bureaucrats are more likely to be waiting for more clarity on the overall picture of cryptocurrencies. “I think they might decide they need legislation from Congress or some policy from the Justice Department to move all these assets,” Sammis said.

Forbes TechCrunch reached out to the U.S. Marshals Service and the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General to confirm the exact amount, but has yet to hear back.